I've been spending many hours lately supporting clients with the decision and tidying process for their sentimental items. Part of my role is to set up sustainable storage and organization systems such as this child's memory and art bin. While the client's role in establishing systems is relatively stress-free, it is still ultimately up to the client to decide what to keep and store in such system.
This is the hard part: deciding which sentimental items to keep and which to let go. When guiding people through this decision process, the following approaches are helpful:
* The function of a sentimental item is to spark a memory for us. This memory might be a positive, negative, confusing or ambivalent one. Think about what types of emotions related to your past you would like to relive when keeping items.
* When processing large amounts of sentimental items such as from a deceased family member, first divide into the 5 categories (clothing, books, papers, miscellaneous, sentimental). Then allow all family members to review categories and decide what items they wish to incorporate into their daily lives or keep to cherish.
* If identifying how previously stored sentimental items will be incorporated into your own life and home, take a moment to first establish a vision regarding this category. Would you like many boxes of items stored forever out of sight? There is nothing wrong with this choice, as long as you store them using preservation methods and periodically (every 3-5 years) review the items. Maybe you would like most sentimental items incorporated into your daily life or on display?
* When choosing to incorporate or display items, get creative! College and sports T-shirts can be made into a patchwork blanket. Other meaningful clothing items such as wedding attire or family members' clothing can be repurposed into a clothing item for frequent use. Jewelry and heirlooms can be worn or put on display. Photographs and other sentimental papers should be transferred to acid-free storage or framed and put on display. There is no limit to the imagination involved in incorporating sentimental items into our lives.
* People often have collections of sentimental items, such as many personal journals or many letters from the same family member. Deciding how many or which ones to keep from such collections can be very difficult. However, even if only one item from each collection is kept, that item is still going to spark the memory which is associated with that part of your life (a person, relationship, career, travel experience, etc). And after all, since the function of sentimental items is to spark the related memory, this can still be accomplished in a meaningful way without saving the entire collection.
I hope you enjoy incorporating sentimental items into your daily life and home!
