Shoebox Project/Artifacts

Using only a shoebox, grab anything that I might want to take with me if I had 5 minutes to leave my home.  This project was particularly difficult for me. We were told that family and pets were automatically going with us.  This left me to stare at and think about all of the belongings that I have aquired throughout my life.  Could I part with them?  Were they necessary to my survival?  For the most part the answer was yes!  The way that I see it is all of my belongings can be replaced...with exception of my photos.  However, I have boxes upon boxes of photos.  I decided to choose 3 particular photos.  One of each of my children from their first day home from the hospital.  Why these 3?  I will always know what my children look like now, I don't ever want to forget what they looked like when they were first born.  So my photos went into the shoebox along with a wallet that I stuffed all birth certificates, ID cards and social security cards.  I packed a baby bottle to be able to feed my youngest, my cell phone to let family and friends know what has happened to us, a book that belongs to my mother, a head band because I ALWAYS wear head bands and my video recorder to record our future lives. 

We all did this, as a class, and brought our belongings to look at.  It was rather interesting that every person included their cell phone and/or some piece of technology in their belongings.  We did this project to have us determine what we could live without if we were had to leave our homes, and had very little or no room to store our belongings on the trip to wherever we were going like the people on the wagon trains had to.  This really made me think about what was actually important in my life.