Sentimental clutter can be challenging to let go of.
Sentimental clutter is often the hardest part of decluttering a home. There are frequently requests for help via the Facebook page on what to do with old photos and memorabilia. I’m sharing my thoughts and the strategies I’ve used to declutter sentimental items.
Please note: it was not the first thing that I decluttered. I would advise anyone paring down their stuff to put special mementos at the end of the queue for decluttering. The work of sifting through items you have a lot of memories attached to is often slow and taxing.
What is sentimental clutter? I define it as mementos that don’t get used in everyday life. Ticket stubs, love letters, photo albums. Maybe even everyday items from a loved one that has passed away. You know it’s sentimental clutter because you never use it and only touch or see it occasionally.
Moving is often a time when the boxes of old photos and report cards comes out. Instead of packing you take a trip down memory lane. It can be a wonderful and enjoyable way to remember and celebrate the past. But… if you just pack it all up again and carry it on to the next place, and don’t look at it until the next move, you’re relegating those special items to the clutter pile.
Here are some ideas to think about as you ponder how to deal with sentimental clutter.
The item doesn’t hold the memory. You do.
Often people can’t part with the memento because they think if they do, they will forget about that time. This can be especially true for items attached to loved ones that are gone. But the item doesn’t hold the memory. You hold the memory. Try to think of the items as simply a thing that sparks the memory. And that there are so many ways to spark a memory beyond things.
Too many memory items, or sentimental clutter, can actually prevent us from enjoying what we do have.
Box after box of loose photos doesn’t always elicit beautiful memories. It can bring panic with the thoughts of, how will I sort all of this? And guilt too: shouldn’t I be treasuring and enjoying all this stuff? It can even be a burden in a small home. When you don’t have a lot of space a few extra boxes really does use up valuable storage.
Useful and enjoyable things should be used and seen.
The five bankers boxes of who knows what that sit in the garage aren’t being used or seen. In fact, often these boxes of sentimental clutter are stored haphazardly. They become victims of water damage or mold. If it was useful and important in your life shouldn’t it be well taken care of? If the idea of spending days and dollars putting everything in organized protective sleeves and giving it prime storage in your home is unappealing… well, that’s your answer. This ‘stuff’ isn’t that important to you. The memories and people and experiences are. But the stuff you’ve attached the memory to is really just stuff.
Ideas for paring down sentimental clutter.
Display things that you love. This makes it easier to choose those photos and mementos that have a lot of meaning to you. Scan all those old photos and make a coffee table book out of them. Then let them go. Make a display box for the baby items…. and then give the rest of those baby hats and onesies away.
Honour your past and people in a new way. Visit that beach your grandmother loved once a year. Call up that college friend you haven’t talked to in a while and reminisce. Maybe you need to do something bigger to finally let go of those physical items that you attach to memories and people. Make a donation in a loved one’s name. Save up and see Hamilton again (this time you don’t need to save every piece of paper from it).
If it’s your kid’s stuff, and they are out of the house, give it to them to hold on to. Everyone has had that call: come and get your stuff, we don’t want it in the basement anymore. It’s a right of passage to take those yearbooks and soccer trophies from your parent’s home to your own. And while the kids are there, help them reduce those boxes by half.
Outsource photo scanning. Maybe some relatives will share the bill. Many people put off scanning photos because it’s really time consuming. I get it. I’ve been there. If you can’t let old photos go because you need to scan them, get it done. Have a scanning party. Ask family to bring laptops and a scanner and spend a Saturday reminiscing and scanning. Turn those scans into a photo book.
How have you dealt with sentimental clutter?
Right now I’m working through the books. I’m dreading starting on the sentimental items to be honest. Particularly the years of digital photos I haven’t printed. Yikes! It feels good to be clearing out the house though and I did toss a box of old love letters and photos from my Ex without opening the box again. I had been carting the box around for years wondering what I should do with it. I used to think that my daughters might like to see all this stuff when they are older – but now that I am older and have to consider that my time on earth may be short I really don’t want them to see this stuff! I need to do my old journals next. There are some things kids just don’t need to know about their parents. *insert laughing until you cry emoji here*
Are you going to redact sections of the journals with a black marker? 🙂 I saw a thread on Twitter recently from a woman reading her dad’s love letters to her mum. Thought she was about to have nice moment reminiscing and the first letter was about how much he missed ‘shagging’ their mum. Yikes!
I’m trying to unclutter my digital photos and organize them a bit. It’s so slow. I get distracted and start emailing photos to friends and family and watching little video clips of the kids when they were toddlers. Slow but nice. Good luck!
Great post about how to deal with the sentimental clutter and the heart tugs. Save the sentimental stuff for last. It takes longer because of the emotional pull, the most difficult part of decluttering for that reason.
I have a small box of sentimental items. I’ve taken pictures of the contents – as emotional back up in case anything happens to the box…at least I’ll have a picture. Took me a while to realize bins and boxes of stuff are not really treasures if they are not treasured and cared for. Small shoe box size of sentimental is plenty now for me.
The last of my decluttering will be to sort through the photos – I have all the negatives already organized in binders in chronological order (started doing that in high school). (I plan to use a scanning service to properly scan the negatives I intend to keep.) But sorting through the physical photos is time consuming and once I start – I want to keep going and not be interrupted. Plus I’ll need all spare surfaces to do it properly. My goal is to have digital copies sorted and backed up of the older photos.
I have a small leather photo album – holds maybe 75 4-x-6-inch photos. I want to get all my favourites sorted into this one album to keep handy and to look at while the rest will be digital. Otherwise, the pictures, faces, events, are all easy to find on the computer if they are organized and coded properly.
My books are now all digital. Clothes are down to capsule wardrobe and a few treasures, with weather related necessities of course.
Important papers are backed up and easy to grab in an emergency. Family member has a back up drive stored off site for me too.
It’s taken me years to declutter and I’m not finished yet. All that work is worth the results. A few weeks ago there was a fire in my building, all were safe. I heard the overall alarm, grabbed the cat and my backpack emergency bag (always kept by the door, even has a spare backup to the computer) and off we went. Standing outside with the neighbours that evening waiting for the fire crew to give us the all clear, I thought “what if” it had been a big fire and I had lost material possessions, my home, everything I owned, etc. and realized decluttering helped me know what I had in the apartment, and perhaps there would be less regretted emotional panic wondering what was lost – when you know what you have to begin with.
Decluttering has not made me less sentimental about material things, just made me realize the material things trigger the memories and that memory can still be triggered by a photo, conversations, and I can let go of the stuff. Easier to relive memories from a small container than a garage of boxes.
We keep all our sentimental memory items in one banker’s box for myself, my husband and our two younger children (9 & 7). The oldest will be 18 at the end of the month and wanted to keep track of his own stuff. Everything is vacuum sealed in plastic bags. I have some traditional clothing from the country I was born in the box. I am trying to decide how I want to frame it to display.
A lot of it is backups of scanned photos, slides, and home movies from my Grandparents home. I scanned all the slides. I converted the VHS to DVD. The 8 mm movies we went away to be converted. Every time my Dad visits he brings a new load of photos for me to scan and takes the ones he previously left. I also type whatever was written on the back of the photo on a document with the image file number. All of the photos, slides, and movies have been uploaded to the internet for easier sharing amongst family members. I plan to make and have printed photo books for each of my children and myself with names/photo descriptions so they can see their ancestors. Some of the photos I scanned are almost 120 years old.
Most other items I scanned or took pictures of it and have two backups of.
This post resonates with me as I just inherited a large box of photos and legal papers belonging to my deceased parents. The box has been in an attic for the last 5 years but now needs to be dealt with.
It’s sad to dispose of someone else’s memories but I will scan and keep a few photos and think happy thoughts while I am doing so. It would have been so nice to know the who /where/when relating to the beautiful sepia photos!
This is a great how-to and I’m sure will inspired people to dig in and tackle this tough spot. Thanks for sharing!