I STUMBLED across long-forgotten scraps of paper and pictures, which had been stuffed into random drawers and boxes, while clearing out our messy and disorganized office at the weekend.

Things the boys had drawn or written when they were young, it was an emotional treasure trove which took me by surprise.

Some people cherish the first baby tooth their child loses and store it in a special silver trinket box. I began with the best of intentions, hastily hiding each of my boys’ first teeth for ‘safe keeping’. But I lost track of where they were long ago.

I didn’t feel so bad about this after helping my mother-in-law, a hoarder, clear out her under-stairs cupboard.

One of the items which emerged was a jam jar full of children’s teeth: “Oh, that’s the boys’ first teeth,” she explained. She has three boys and didn’t know which was which. Would any of them ever be interested in these teeth, none of which they can even be sure belong to them?

But what treasured mementos should you hold onto as a reminder of your children’s younger years?

Friends have carefully packed away their son or daughter’s first pair of shoes, or lovingly wrapped in tissue paper the outfit their newborn came home from hospital in or wore on their first day at nursery.

I have done none of these things. With five growing boys, there was always too much of everything and, in my constant quest to clear the house of clutter, I was always looking for excuses to throw things out, not hold onto them.

Nor are there any lovingly compiled scrapbooks full of drawings and paintings or stories they wrote when they were at primary school.

The boys all came home with so many works of art, I had to be ruthlessly selective, telling them how wonderful their latest paintings were while stuffing them into the bin once their backs were turned.

But I did hold onto a few things, like the poem - littered with spelling mistakes and adorned with colourful drawings in crayon - which my eldest wrote about our cat: ‘My cat is a cuddley, snugley cat. He is a warm cat. He likes laying near the heater.’ I liked that. It still hangs on the wall, and he’s 26 now.

Otherwise, much of what I have curated has been random and haphazard, occasionally stuffing the odd item into the nearest drawer or cupboard, with the intention of getting round to doing something with it later.

I wish I could find the story Charlie wrote when he was nine, entitled ‘My hero’. Under a drawing of his big brother William, he had written: ‘He is clever, he is kind. He is good at football. I want to be like him.’

I thought about it every time they were beating each other up over the following years, and wished I had it to hand to show them as I tried to break them up.

Neither did I keep the note I found on our bed one night. It was from Roscoe, then aged six, complaining he was not getting enough attention from us and that we favoured his younger brother, who was about two at the time.

‘Albert gets all the love and the care,’ he wrote. He signed it ‘Roscoe (No Love, No Care)’.

I felt so sad about it at the time, I destroyed the note. And I tried to ensure Roscoe didn’t feel left out because his younger brother did, inevitably, demand more attention.

But that note has since passed into family folklore and it’s something we all, including Roscoe, laugh about now. In fact, one of his nicknames is No Love, No Care.

I wish I had kept it.

Among the scraps of paper I found in the office at the weekend, there are a few little handprints, hand-made Mother’s Day cards, including one wishing me a ‘Happy Moth’s Day’ and others picturing me as a superhero, including one wearing giant underpants.

There was a primary school story about our caravan holiday in France where, despite all the activities we did with them, the highlight was when our ‘fridge exploded’ after we left a bottle of Coke in the freezer compartment.

I had forgotten about seven-year-old Charlie’s letter to the Tooth Fairy: ‘Dear Tooth Fairy,’ he wrote. ‘Sorry to bother you but I was wondering if you could tell me what you want to do with a 7-year-old tooth for one pound? Very, very, very sorry to bother you. Have a good night, Love from Charlie. PS Wake me up.’ Priceless.

I may not have any of their teeth or baby clothes. But I’m glad I at least stuffed a few scraps of paper away for safekeeping.