In a past blog post, I discussed the false promises of marketing, but in this post, I want to talk about how to go about separating the meaning from your sentimental items. Believe it or not, they are similar. We graft stories onto our items over time. Sometimes, what we are actually attaching to the item is the idea of a story.
Especially in the midst of some sort of loss, it’s hard to separate the possibility of an untold story from the stories we actually do know. Sometimes, as in my case, this is a loss of self. I suffered from a TBI ten years ago, but the most difficult part was having key characteristics of my own personality change. I knew the story of my past items, but I struggled to understand if they had a place in my unknown future.
It’s easy to declutter a space you use all the time. You know you haven’t dug out that pickle keeper since you last moved. Your sentimental storage isn’t something you use. It’s something you store away as a remembrance. Something to dig through when you’re old and have grandkids asking what why you didn’t have the newest toy when you were a kid.
It’s also hard to tell when something has crossed securely from an active hobby/display item to a sentimental item. This question has a heavy weight on it. Will I ever …fill in the blank…again? That feels so final. It’s also unknown. In the fear of the finality of one part of our lives, we tend to want to turn away from that pain. Delay that pain. By default, we have to tuck it away to deal with later. And sometimes time actually does bring clarity. Sometimes.
Strategy: Give it time
If you’ve lost a loved one, including your own identity, give it time. Also, you might need to get it out of your face just to heal. That’s understandable and reasonable. In my case, I was told that time was on my side. I was only 26 when I had the TBI. Being young and having no structural damage or large sections of my brain damaged, it was just a matter of time to regain skills and knowledge. No one dared suggest I’d be 100% again.
How could I know what I might do again? I gave it almost six years before I was introduced to the term Minimalism and went down the rabbit hole. It was the best thing I could have done for myself. For months I couldn’t comprehend a sentence after an eight-hour workday. I was reading. Though initially I had very narrow hours and couldn’t track information for long. After six years though, I knew I wouldn’t be going back to those handwritten notes from who knows what seminar.
Here’s the strategy. When I went through items that were “sentimental”, such as letters and cards, if I didn’t just love it and had some sort of negative feeling about it, I would put it out on a table and walk by it for sometimes days and sometimes weeks. Doing this allowed my subconscious to recognize that it needed to leave and start to untangle my feelings.
My feelings…sadness. Most of the mail and cards made me sad. There were barely any personal notes in the cards and the letters were from people that I thought of as dear friends. However, looking back at it they weren’t. They would write when extremely bored. Almost no one put a serious note in my yearbook either. It all just made me sad. After a week or sometimes a month of pondering it, I understood that I feel sad about the time I wasted convincing myself that I had great relationships when in reality I had some of the most fleeting relationships.
Processing the feelings helped me let go. How long will it take to process? No one can know. However, starting as soon as you feel strong enough is the best time to start. Usually, after you find out one or two of the reasons, the same trend will be scattered throughout your sentimental items. It’s a bit heartbreaking to see a lifetime of coping mechanisms played out in belongings laid out in front of you. I don’t regret letting go of any of them. My sentimental items fit into a small trunk and what I call a Boost Box (read more about that here).
Strategy: Give it perspective
Perspective is hard to get during grief. That’s why we gave it time, but once the time is over and you feel stronger now it’s time for perspective. Depending on what phase of life you’re in, this can look really different. When you are young it’s easy to think everything is ahead of you. The possibilities are endless. You could imagine saving your baby clothes for your baby’s baby. You think I always wanted this, I’ll have a chance to have that or do that when…(fill in the blank).
Dreaming is great. But it can be dangerous. I fully encourage buying things to learn or try new things. That’s growth and it’s worth a lot of money. Just remember that time limits everything. Therefore, we can’t be trying and doing everything consistently, so make an effort to let old ideas go. They can come back around. You aren’t closing the book forever.
Pretend for a second that your grandfather played a trombone in the Air Force Marching Band and he loved it. All your life you heard stories about this band and how much he loved his time touring and playing. Then he passes and you now have his trombone. I’m not sure if you’ve seen the cases for trombones, but they are the most unfriendly things to stack…possibly worse than a Sousaphone.
Unless someone in your family currently plays the trombone, it does not make any logical sense to keep the trombone. None. Emotionally, you can convince yourself that maybe your unborn child or grandchild will. Or…maybe…you’ll pick it up and learn how to play it after you retire. After all, you’ll have all that time. Most of us can relate to this urge. It’s very common. That trombone had sentimental value. Its sentimental value, though, was to your grandfather. Not you. The stories have value to you.
Let’s say you go ahead and sell it. Then just as you feared, your grandson learns trombone in the school band and loves it! You instantly regret not having your grandfather’s trombone. I’m sorry to say but you likely will feel this regret. The most important thing is that simply the fact that your grandson shares this love for trombone with your grandfather gives you the opportunity to share all those stories with your grandson. The sentiment was not lost! It was in the stories.
This is the thought process for separating the meaning from your sentimental items. Remember that the item is not the story (aka the meaning). We are reminding ourselves that the meaning we attributed to that item is unique to our experience with it. It isn’t intrinsic to the item.
Strategy: Weigh its true value
Many people hold onto things because they were told or think they might be worth a lot. Often this isn’t true but you’ll never know if you don’t find the right person to value it, or persons. This is harder than it seems in the digital age. It’s possible to get the value out of it. Go for it. However, most items are not worth the time it would take you to get that value. Read more on the sunk cost theory.
I know this is easier said than done, but imagine a space where you can do handstands in. If you could do handstands! What could you be doing with all the space it’s taking up? For this strategy to work you do need to look at the entire storage and figure an overall amount that’s reasonable. Still, your space is very expensive. If you’ve ever complained about property taxes….well, you know where this is going.
The other aspects are stress, the effort to clean, keep undamaged, and get around it to get to other things. Also, do you want to deal with everything when you’re bedridden and need to go to a nursing home? Too many things will make it hard to change your house into income for that nursing home.
For real though, you can also weigh its sentimental value. However, you should do that against what you need to remember about that person or that event. Don’t assume you’ll need it when you have Alzheimer’s though.
Strategy: See the trees in the forest
If you have large stores of things or large collections, it’s important to look at the individual piece’s value. Don’t assume because one thing is special that it all is. For me, these are musical instruments. There was a time that I basically did collect them. However, the alto saxophone is sentimental, and the tenor is amazing, but nearly none of the others hold much value to me. The soprano saxophone is linked to a memory, that’s funny but not necessarily good.
If you have collected lots of things over the years, it’s a solid strategy to simply look for some that can go. This strategy is helpful in separating the meaning from your sentimental items. No collection has equal value across all pieces. Even in a China set. Don’t believe me? Try comparing the price of a plate vs a creamer … thing.
Strategy: Give up the green
Here’s some good news. You’d be surprised how many people don’t mind that a name is on the t-shirt. Bad news, everything is heading to the landfill eventually. Some will go sooner than others. I’m talking to you textbook! Trophies and plaques can be donated with the nameplate removed. If it’s engraved glass, nope. That doesn’t mean you should keep it.
I spent so much of my childhood wanting to fill my room with ribbons and trophies. I honestly didn’t know from what. I just wanted them all. Then I received enough to fill a wall and now they don’t mean much. I learned that, for me, if I didn’t work hard and deliberately to earn it, it’s not worth hanging onto. Sometimes that mean’s a sixth-place ribbon. Sometimes it means that the first-place ribbon is going in the garbage. Sometimes, I worked for it and I still don’t care about it. Weird, I know.
You just need to know yourself. Then let the rest go to the trash if it needs to. You can look to give it the right home for a while but if it’s in danger of becoming procrastination clutter (learn more here and the video below), then throw it in the trash.
Oddly enough this also applies to money. The money is gone. The money you might be able to get back might also not be worth it. Know whether you’re the type to sell things timely or not and then go with you.
Hopefully, you’ll find as much help in these strategies for separating the meaning from your sentimental items as I did. As always, be sure to master other spaces before you attempt to tackle sentimental items. They require higher self-confidence in your own ability to make smart decisions about letting go.
