The Clutter Fairy Weekly #141
A Detour Down Memory Lane: Declutter Stuff with Sentimental Value
Every home contains at least a few items we keep even though they serve no practical purpose and can be awkward to display and difficult to maintain. We’re talking sentimental stuff! Even when we want to let go, we get sidetracked down the path of memories, emotions, and long-held beliefs. In episode #141 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, explores sentimental clutter and offers tips for balancing sentimental value with our real-world conditions of time, energy, space, and resources.
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The Weekly Tittle is an exercise designed to focus your attention on a specific space, aspect, or challenge of decluttering and organizing your home. We assign a new tittle in each webcast/podcast, then check on your progress the following week.
More Than a Feeling?
This week’s assignment is to examine your attachment to something that you’re keeping only for its sentimental value:
- Identify an item that you keep purely for sentimental reasons, not because it meets your standards of beauty or usefulness or because the thing itself “sparks joy” for you.
- Write down a few words or phrases to describe the item. Where, when, and how did it come into your possession?
- Make a few notes about what this item means to you—especially in terms of the people, places, events, or other memories that the item evokes.
- Reflect on whether your feelings about the object have changed in the time you’ve possessed it. How do you feel about displaying the item in your home?
- Consider whether you would be comfortable taking a photograph as a way to preserve the memory without keeping the item, or whether you’d be willing to gift the item to a family member or close friend.
- After reflection, are you ready to decide that this item is an irreplaceable treasure? Or did it turn into clutter as time has gone by?
We know this is a tough exercise, so you may still not be ready to make that call. That’s okay! The point of the exercise is to get you to explore and understand your feelings about sentimental items.
For the full discussion of this week’s tittle, watch the Weekly Tittle segment on YouTube.
I tried from #141 Podcast.
I was not able to donate/pay forward my BH wheel chair for the 2 parties who called…neither showed to pick up as of last Friday. In honest reflection,
I am sensing that this is tougher for me to let go of and these kind folks probably picked up on my still sentimental attachment as we talked. These are itty bitty steps I am seeking to take. This WC is now a “clutter” with the tender freedom attached to let it go. I want my space back to put my pretty Christmas tree in. Thats ok now also to explore…my pretty space, my home.
Thank you Ed and Gayle. and All…Marsh
Hubby and I donated a pair of bowls. We decided our feelings about them have changed over time. We appreciate your words about the fact that sentimental objects can be hard to declutter. Maybe taking care of old objects can mean donating them so someone can value them for their beauty rather than keeping them because of feelings of obligation or duty?
Much love to everyone from Anna and Anders in Sweden