My friend’s grandmother was in her 90s when she died, leaving behind a beautiful extended family, a lovely life legacy and boxes upon boxes of things nobody wanted or had any use for. Grams loved to travel and had souvenirs from various places. She kept decades of greeting cards and knicknacks she’d collected. As family members went through her belongings, they kept a few things here and there—a piece of jewelry, a recipe box, a silver serving spoon.
Most of her furniture, clothing and other useful things were sold or given away, but most of her personal items—old albums, mementos, etc.—ended up being thrown away. It was a good lesson for all of us.
The things we keep for “sentimental value” often have the least value to anyone else.
No one, family or stranger alike, wants hundreds of photos of people they don’t know and memories that aren’t theirs. No one wants a keepsake figurine from a trip they didn’t go on with a date that means nothing to them. The things that hold sentimental value for one person are meaningless to everyone else, and the more our lives become saturated with “stuff,” the more we are in danger of holding onto too many things because of the memories or meaning we attach to them.
We see it when we try to declutter our homes and have a hard time because of the “sentimental value” of certain things. Parents hesitate when it’s time to purge the baby stuff, as all those adorable items remind us of when our kids were little. It happens when we hold onto the hat we bought at Disneyland even though we never ever wear it because it reminds us of our awesome family vacation. The china we inherited that we never eat off of, the plaque we got for outstanding achievement, the favorite book that’s falling apart—all of that stuff we keep because “It’s a memory!” accumulates.
The problem is that eventually other people have to deal with our stuff.
If people want to collect mementos and keepsakes and hold onto everything anyone ever gives them, that’s their right, of course. Some people are more sentimental and nostalgic than others and some people place more meaning on things than others. We can philosophize all day about whether and to what degree people should be detached from material things, but the reality is that every person has their own relationship to stuff that they have to navigate emotionally.
What is universal, though, is that someone will have to deal with our stuff when we die, and the more stuff we have, the more work we end up placing on their shoulders. Going through someone’s belongings takes time and prompts a million decisions, which quickly becomes overwhelming. It’s even harder when a lot of those belongings clearly meant something to them but mean nothing to anyone else.
It didn’t used to be like this, at least not to this level. Average people didn’t used to have so many belongings they had to pay for spaces to store it all. We are inundated with stuff, and the more things we attach sentimental value to the more in danger we are of leaving way too much for our loved ones to sort through.
Things aren’t memories. They are only memory triggers.
Our memories live in our minds, not in material things. All sentimental items do is trigger our memories, but we don’t need physical items to keep our memories alive. So the question is, how do we keep the triggers without keeping all the things?
Photos are some of the best memory triggers, and in the digital age, it’s easier than ever to utilize them. If there is an item you’re having a hard time parting with for sentimental reasons, take a photo of it and keep it in a “Mementos” folder. A photo of something isn’t exactly the same as the real thing, but it can fulfill the same purpose. Sentimental value is all about memories, and seeing the thing in a photo will still trigger those.
I’m not suggesting people never hold onto anything at all for sentimental reasons, but most things we keep as keepsakes don’t really need to be kept. It’s the memories we treasure, not the items that trigger the memories, so unless a thing has some actual tangible value or some sort of genuine sensory element that would be lost in a photo, take a snapshot and let go of the thing itself.
The more we can disconnect our memories from our physical things—or at least find ways to document those sentimental value items that trigger memories instead of holding onto them—the less overwhelming our living spaces will be for us in the now and the less burden we’ll leave for others in the future.
