How to declutter sentimental items

We’re at week 8 of the #LYSdeclutterthon. Over the last 8 weeks, you have hopefully gone through every item in your home to consciously choose what you want to keep – instead of thinking about what you want to get rid of. You’ve hopefully honed the skill of choosing what you LOVE, made some space, or at least brought some organisation to everything that remained. So now, it’s time to address this emotion-laden category of sentimental items. Apart from wanting to enjoy them to their fullest, it is important to process your past. Done right, decluttering sentimental items, bringing loved items to forefront, and letting go of emotionally heavy reminders of the past, can be truly rewarding.

Vision

My vision for my sentimental items is to have quality, not quantity. Rather than have whole albums of photos (stored away and enjoyed rarely), I want to select my favourites and have them pride of place in my home (visible and enjoyed all the time). I want fewer ‘memory boxes’ and more moments where I spot beloved items of e.g the shelf each time I leave the bedroom. Lastly, I want it to be obvious to anyone who is in my home that is it mine as well as what is important to me.

Division

Gather all your sentimental items (or a sub-category if you have lots). You might have had some from other categories; a wedding dress is an obvious sentimental item from clothes category or you have mugs gifted from friends from the kitchen category – all these you might have postponed from that category until this category. Go get them now. Also, don’t neglect one of the most common locations for sentimental items; your parents’ house! They keep it because they think you want it and you let them keep it because you think they want it. In reality, if you went through it all you’d properly keep a couple of nostalgia-inducing items, rather than the whole box (or attic!) of arts and crafts that you fashioned as a toddler. This is your moment to free them of your sentimental items.

As always, divide between keep and discard. The main message here is BE STRONG. Marie Kondo says “it is not our memories but the person we have become because of those past experiences that we should treasure”. You don’t have to hold on to the past to maintain the person you are now. Allow yourself to be liberated from anything that doesn’t bring back the very best of memories. And when we say the very best of memories, it’s quality, not quantity. Take photos for example. If you have 100 photos of an event in an album you never look at, you’ll rarely enjoy them. Instead, select a photo or five that truly capture the whole feeling of that event or period of your life in pride of place. The other 95 photos might be nice, but you don’t need them all to have that memory. With the best photo(s) in a lovely frame, you’ll be able to enjoy the memory regularly! You can, of course, keep photo albums. But the point here is to go through and consciously choose which ones you need in order to have the memories you want and, with that selection, can you display them so that you can enjoy them even more than if they were in an album?

Gifts are often sentimental items and people feel tremendous guilt when letting them go. Just remember that the intention of the gift wasn’t for you to possess that item for all of eternity. They wanted to show you their appreciation for you and that happened in the giving, not in what was given. To all my friends and family that have something I gave them but want to let it go; permission granted! So this is your time to get rid of the hand bag you dislike, or the scarf that’s not your colour, or the vase that isn’t your style.

Position

Now that you (hopefully) have fewer - probably very special - sentimental items, you can display them with pride or store them more easily. Bookshelves are great for little ornaments. My bathroom is now the location for two of my favourite mugs that were sentimental but that I didn’t necessarily want to drink tea from, now used as handy make-up brush storage that I get to see every day! And of the photos you’re keeping – give yourself a deadline to put your favourites in those frames you’ve bought or on the memory card of your e-frame!

LOVE

Now that you’ve sorted all your items, you can truly love your space. This is the stage most people recognise the power of a whole home decluttering. They surprise themselves at the emotional baggage they were holding on to. They feel unburdened from the feelings and thoughts that items held with them. And the beautiful memories that help us enjoy our present are front and centre.