Finding Joy in Memorabilia

I can’t believe we are almost at Halloween which is my youngest’s birthday and the last birthday of the year for us. Once it’s over, I start to think about Christmas (am I allowed to say that word yet?!). We have now, except for Christmas Decorations which we’ll come to in December, finished Komono and are moving into the Sentimental Categories. I’ve split sentimental across 5 weeks and 3 main categories. Objects and memorabilia, Letters and Other Papers, and Photos – both digital and physical. That will take us through to December when Tidy 2020 will largely be over and we’ll be looking at Christmas Preparations.

This week we’re looking at Physical Objects and that’s pretty much anything sentimental that isn’t a Paper or a Photograph. It’s quite a wide-ranging category, which includes sentimental clothing (wedding dresses etc), Sentimental Jewellery, Old Teddies and Toys, Sentimental Ornaments, Trophies and medals and so on. Hopefully as you have been going through your house, you have been gathering these items into one or two places so that they are already together. Split them into categories now (such as clothing, jewellery, toys) and pick each one up to see if it Sparks Joy. If it does, then great, keep it!

Sometimes we can find it difficult to part with things that are sentimental that don’t Spark Joy. Maybe looking at it hurts our heart, or perhaps we are keeping it because we feel we ought to. For example, I was working with a client recently who had been keeping a skirt that belonged to her sister. She felt that she ought to hold on to it because her mother had. However, her sister hadn’t wanted to keep it and when I asked the question, “Does it Spark Joy?” she looked at it with a little surprise and admitted that it didn’t. I suggested that she release it for another person to find joy with and she did.

Other times, we hang on to large bulky things in order to try to preserve a memory, but often there are smaller things that work just as well as memory prompts and it is always possible to take a picture. Once you have decided if you want to keep something, think about how you are going to honour it. There is no point in hanging on to things and shoving them in the back of a cupboard never to be seen again. Consider getting sentimental jewellery re-set if you won’t wear it in its current form. Wedding dresses can be beautifully boxed up if you want to keep it, or let go to charity, or given to a charity that makes gowns for still born babies.

I wear my Grandmother’s ring any time that I put on jewellery. I keep my trophies out on display and my Red Dragon that I won at the Red Dragon ride with my pony Dragon sits in the bottom of my wardrobe so that I see him every time I open it. I like to get him out and give him a hug every so often! A glass bottle bought back from a holiday in Italy Sparks a lot of Joy for us and is on display in a cabinet of ours.