Sentimental keepsakes

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Just curious, but how do others feel about keeping sentimental things around. I live in a small appartment and there really is barely enough room for the essentials. I like to stock up when things are on sale. (I have a tight budget after all) and a lot of my closet/cupboard space goes to non-perisahble items, cosmetics and cleaning supplies I buy on sale and know I will eventually use

Also, I am NOT a good house keeper and I find the more items I have the harder it is for me to keep my place looking welcoming to visitors. I actually purposely NEVER have anyone over because my place just doesn’t look good.

Well, my mom just sent me 6 boxes of stuff since she sold her house. Believe it or not, in the stack of paper’s was a bus schedule from 1964 ! I wasn’t even born then.

Other things I didn’t even know she had. There were 6 cards congratulating her on my birth, as well as a plastic baggy with some of the hair from my first hair cut ! When I first saw that, I was about to take a fly swater to it until I realized what it was 😛

I must admit, it was fun to look at my school report card from 1978 but are these items really necessary ?

So what do others do with sentimental things?

CM
 
The bus schedule tells me she has no idea what’s in those boxes. If any of it were important to her, she would have kept it herself.

Verify that you are free to throw out anything that you don’t want, then do that. If the item elicits a big “AH, HOW NICE!”, sure, keep it, but if you never find you’ve thrown out something you later wish you’d kept, you keep way too much stuff. For instance, on the birth congratulations, I might keep the ones from people I knew, but not ones from total strangers…well, unless they were famous total strangers! 😃
 
If you don’t want it, offer it to your other family members first and if there are no takers, pitch it. Remember to recycle!
 
I keep almost nothing >.<

I’m trying to keep a few things for my DD’s to have fun with/ use at school when they are older, but I really hate “stuff” sitting around in boxes.
 
I suppose you could go through the stuff, keep what you’d like to have, box it up, and if there are any pieces for display, you could rotate those pieces seasonally. I’m thinking you can probably condense six boxes into two.

Count yourself very blessed if Mom sent you the stuff with the attitude of “you might be interested in some of this stuff,” rather than “you HAVE to keep this stuff!” My mother falls into the latter category. She recently moved into a senior apartment, and I got stuck with a lot of her furniture, glassware, household items, and just plain old tsochtskis, most of which are not something which is consistent with my tastes! Worse yet, when she comes over, she looks around to ensure that her old stuff is on prominent display. And even worse, my husband has plenty of his mother’s old junk over here as well. Efforts to get rid of some of that stuff has been met with screaming protest on his part.

Although I have my own house it is a small one: less than 2,000 square feet. With Mom and late MIL’s stuff laying around, I barely have room to put things I like myself in my own home.

There was one particularly ugly Victorian style lamp that Mom insisted I take. As soon as she went home, I listed it on eBay, and made a few bucks. The next time she was over and looking for it, I claimed the dog accidentally broke it. She was disappointed, but accepted that explanation.

Whatever you do, don’t go renting a storage unit to store stuff you don’t really care whether you have.
 
I would highly recommend Peter Walsh’s excellent and sensitively-written book,It’s All Too Much.

Mr. Walsh deals with this very issue of “sentimental clutter” in the book.

He says that many people have a hard time letting go of sentimental items because they are afraid that they will also “let go” of their loved ones.

We have to make a separation between our loved ones and their “stuff.” We have to understand that the “stuff” is NOT the same as the loved ones.

We have to understand that keeping boxes of “stuff” hidden in a basement or attic, or worse, in a rented storage locker, is NOT demonstrating love and respent for our loved ones and is NOT honoring their memory!

If the “stuff” is really so valuable, then we need to keep it in a place of honor where we can see it on a regular basis and remember fondly our loved ones.

Unless we are wealthy and are able to purchase a mansion with many large rooms, we can’t keep everything and consider it all “valuable.”

If we who have regular-sized homes try to keep everything and consider it “valuable,” we end up with stacks of stuff hidden away, and none of it has any value because it is never seen or used by us or others. In fact, it can become damaged and become a breeding ground for mold, maggots, and rodents. Is this really the best way to honor our loved ones?

Mr. Walsh suggest carefully choosing a few items–only a few–that have a deep personal meaning to us, and displaying these items in a prominent place of honor in our home where we can see them often and call to mind our dear ones.

Of course, this can get out of hand, and if you have no “places of honor” left in your home because of clutter, then you need to take a hard look at how many “precious items” are really necessary to sufficiently honor the various loved ones.

The main thing to keep in mind is that the “stuff” is NOT our loved ones. We can cherish the memory of our loved ones and honor them without having their “stuff” cluttering our homes and smothering us.

Since this is a Catholic online community, I would suggest that the very best way that we can preserve the precious memories of our loved ones is to pray for them and have Masses offered for them.

Again, read Mr. Walsh’s book. It’s so helpful and firmly compassionate for those who have trouble “letting go” of stuff.
 
It’s not just the “stuff,” some people have trouble remembering events and even other people unless they have a physical object to handle. That’s one type of hoarder. The other type of hoarder of “stuff” just can’t decide if the 1964 bus schedule is important and so they keep everything.

Look at the stuff in the boxes, keep anything you really find important to your life (maybe none of it is!) and discard the rest. In the long run, none of it matters at all. After all, we can’t take any of this detritus with us when we leave the world. We can’t even take our bodies! Our souls don’t have any pockets! LOL
 
One way to help with the clutter is to go digital! Take LOTS of digital photographs, or scan in the papers and pictures.
This is a GREAT way to keep the sentiment, but get rid of the clutter! Save it to your back-up storage device (or the cloud) and you have a great memory… no clutter! 👍
 
Em_in_FL said:
One way to help with the clutter is to go digital! Take LOTS of digital photographs, or scan in the papers and pictures.
This is a GREAT way to keep the sentiment, but get rid of the clutter! Save it to your back-up storage device (or the cloud) and you have a great memory… no clutter! 👍
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This 👍 Scan everything you can scan that you want to save (heck, it might preserve it better). You can save on dvds and hard drives if you want and have it saved twice if you are worried about one getting messed up. An added bonus of scanning is you email them out to family or put some things on a cd/dvd and make copies and mail it to family.
 
Em_in_FL said:
One way to help with the clutter is to go digital! Take LOTS of digital photographs, or scan in the papers and pictures.
This is a GREAT way to keep the sentiment, but get rid of the clutter! Save it to your back-up storage device (or the cloud) and you have a great memory… no clutter! 👍
Click to expand...
Just asking “would I want a digital copy of this?” might be enough to send it straight into the recycling bin.

As for physical artifacts, I don’t want any of my own hair or teeth from childhood. I can see where my mom might have wanted me to be the one to chuck that stuff out–many moms do not want to be caught committing “sentimenticide”–but I know her well enough to know that she wouldn’t have cared if I decided to chuck my own stuff out. And imagine you become president and somebody shows up at a Las Vegas pawn shop with that stuff. Truly weird, right? Take the chance that it will not be a 1st degree relic some day, and get rid of it!

If you concentrate on what you can take through the narrow gate, you’ll never miss the stuff that couldn’t have gone through, anyway. You have to let go of it, eventually!
 
I have one box to keep stuff like that. Otherwise it goes. If the box gets too full, something must go to make room.
 
It’s best to go through each box and each item. Also, make sure you’re not throwing away something that is valuable (ie: baseball cards, etc). I know my dad has my chopped off ponytail in his drawer. I thought it was weird, but my mom says it’s normal.🤷
 
Good thread - it can be a lot to deal with. A constant struggle for yours truly :o I’m afraid. I’ll have to look and see if I’ve read that book It’s All Too Much. Sounds kind of familiar. I’ve tried many things about clutter.

It seems like there are those of us (or our family members) who have OCD hoarding which is primarily compulsive. Then some of us have ADD hoarding which is more about wanting to deal with the clutter but being inclined to procrastinate - and having indecision about those 1964 bus schedules! After all, they might be worth something on Ebay as antiques! 😃 No! Stop thinking that! :doh2:

See, it’s a constant battle. I have both of those problems, and I am the surviving heir of my parents. I do like the idea of putting up the nice stuff on the walls, and I’m scanning photos now; that eliminates my neurotic fear of them being lost in a tornado or fire. Crazy, but true. Maybe not so crazy, as my mom’s family home was destroyed in a flood, so I know it can happen. But I also know I worry more than the average person about such things.

Here are some CAF Social Groups I started that pertain to this topic - would love to have new members if you are so inclined. :grouphug: Maybe we can all help each other!

**Time Management Team and Clutterbug’s Corner:

forums.catholic-questions.org/group.php?groupid=829

Catholics Overcoming Materialism (Shoppers, Debtors, Hoarders) and Those Who Love Them

forums.catholic-questions.org/group.php?groupid=669

**
 
I’m so glad I visited today. I just went on a cleaning spree today and got rid of my stuff that ***I ***don’t use, but I have baby teeth and cards so many cards. I think I’m afraid that I’ll make someone feel bad. My children have given me items that are not quite my style but it was the thought that counts, right. Now they are both artists so I have really nice homemade cards and nice projects that I have on rotation. However there is still so much stuff. After my mom passed away last year my Dad gave me a number of Mom’s things, but I would give all of my stuff and hers just for 5 minutes to say goodbye or thank you. Now my Gram is using that Catholic Abuela guilt trip to take some of her stuff and stuff that my mom gave to her and giving it to me. I can’t take it. I think I’ll join one of the groups y’all mentioned. And photographs… don’t get me started. Why do I have 50 photos of lions, tigers and bears from a visit to the zoo and maybe 1 of the family… sorry done rambling.
 
Meximo said:
I’m so glad I visited today. I just went on a cleaning spree today and got rid of my stuff that ***I ***don’t use, but I have baby teeth and cards so many cards. I think I’m afraid that I’ll make someone feel bad. My children have given me items that are not quite my style but it was the thought that counts, right. Now they are both artists so I have really nice homemade cards and nice projects that I have on rotation. However there is still so much stuff. After my mom passed away last year my Dad gave me a number of Mom’s things, but I would give all of my stuff and hers just for 5 minutes to say goodbye or thank you. Now my Gram is using that Catholic Abuela guilt trip to take some of her stuff and stuff that my mom gave to her and giving it to me. I can’t take it. I think I’ll join one of the groups y’all mentioned. And photographs… don’t get me started. Why do I have 50 photos of lions, tigers and bears from a visit to the zoo and maybe 1 of the family… sorry done rambling.
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Glad to see you back! :love:

Oh you have 2 artists for kids? That would be really, really tough!

I know JUST what you mean when you say you would give all of your things for just 5 more minutes with your mom! So would I!

And I have taken those stupid photos of animals in a zoo…And sunsets…and skylines…The Eiffel tower…And then I realized that postcards are cheap and there is no reason to re-do them, they’ve already been photographed 1,000,000 times by better photographers than me. I try really hard not to take any scenery photos any more unless there is someone in them…😊
 
On the other hand, postcards are copyrighted, so I take my own “stock photos” of scenery, animals, etc. for future use in art collage projects - HOWEVER - now we have digital, so I don’t have to keep prints! :extrahappy:
 
All i gotta say is, keep SOME stuff.

It was the day before the big move across the ocean and we were scrambling to empty the apartment, deal with mailing issues etc. when my husband remembered the locker room. There were bins there full of stuff I said I would sort but never got around to.

He figured that if I left them there they were all garbage and he emptied all their contents in the huge recycling bin. My diaries, essays, scrapbook from back in the day, pictures, letters from the day when we were still writing letters etc.

We were settled and unpacked in our new country when I realized all that was missing and to this day,nI still have pangs when I think of it. It certainly wasn’t worth all keeping but I would give anything to have at least some of those things for the sake of posterity…
 
1inICXC said:
All i gotta say is, keep SOME stuff.

It was the day before the big move across the ocean and we were scrambling to empty the apartment, deal with mailing issues etc. when my husband remembered the locker room. There were bins there full of stuff I said I would sort but never got around to.

He figured that if I left them there they were all garbage and he emptied all their contents in the huge recycling bin. My diaries, essays, scrapbook from back in the day, pictures, letters from the day when we were still writing letters etc.

We were settled and unpacked in our new country when I realized all that was missing and to this day,nI still have pangs when I think of it. It certainly wasn’t worth all keeping but I would give anything to have at least some of those things for the sake of posterity…
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:eek::eek::eek:

Oh my.

:crying::crying::crying::nope:

That’s why we all need to sort through our stuff and make SURE we know what we have and what we want to keep! I am so sorry.
 
I have a hard time with being too sentimental about things. It’s a work in progress. For now I just try to avoid buying stuff. I’m trying to live on less and focus on buying things of actual value.

Just a thought for anyone out there looking for ideas: My family gives nice jewelry for birthdays, graduations, Christmas, etc. A nice piece of jewelry takes up very little space and it can be passed down for generations. Plus, it’s something your descendants will actually want. 🙂
 
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