Collection Protection

I was waiting in my doctor's office, where faced with a dismal selection of reading materials — People Magazine circa 1998 and vintage Family Circles — I found myself thumbing through the only current publication in the room, The New England Journal of Medicine.

Just as I was sliding into a medical-jargon-induced coma, a picture caught my eye — a photo of Petri dishes on a lab cart.

"Neat," I thought. As I admired the precise rows of little containers, my inner-organizer snapped to attention. Here was the solution for handling my daughter Grace's nature collections.

At 6, Grace is giving the Museum of Natural History a run for its money. Every walk or foray from the house yields some worthy bit of ephemera to add to her hoard, from seashells, butterfly wings, and feathers to skeletal leaves, seed pods, and rusty bottle caps.

And since we are not the Smithsonian, she's taken to displaying her prized items on top of her bedroom dresser — safe from little brother Luke.

Far be it for me to stand in the way of scientific discovery, but it gets tough to dust and clean around such an "organic" installation. The vacuum cleaner, the bane of Grace's existence, is all but banned since I've sucked her native leaf collection into extinction.

I've tried organizing her things in plastic bags and boxes, but she thinks it makes them look like "trash."

Finally, here was a fitting way to corral her treasures. When I got home I went online and ordered a set of plastic Petri dishes. (You can search "Petri dish" at indigoinstruments.com.)

My little curator is quite pleased with the cataloging of her collection and we've even used permanent markers to date and classify items in their individual cases. I bought an inexpensive tray where I can organize and stack the dishes for easy cleaning access without fear of loss or damage.

Trust me, it's worth the effort...you don't even want to know about the dragonfly wing disaster.