What is your most memorable keepsake?
A shell from your first trip to the ocean? Your beloved dog’s name tag? The hotel receipt from your first road trip?
Now… Do you know where it is?
Keeping mementos from special times in your life should be a joyful experience for years to come. But just like with all valuables, they need a safe place. It’s no fun to find your irreplaceable items torn, stained, and trampled by the rigors of life.
A few key steps can keep you enjoying your keepsakes as long as you want!
Let’s break Memento Management down into 3 stages to make it seem doable.
1. Select a container
2. Make sure items get to the container
3. Maintain the container
Not so scary, right?! Stay with me and I’ll explain each step.
1. Select a container
Instead of getting wrapped up into selecting the perfect container, start with whatever you have on hand and know you can trade up at any point.
Points to consider:
What storage space do you have available?
Any potential problems to contend with like moisture or dust?
How heavy are the items you are storing?
Items stored in the basement will do better with a plastic tote to protect from potential water and dust. Closet storage will do well with cloth or cardboard containers, but if they are going up on a shelf, think about how heavy it might get and go smaller. If it is too cumbersome to access, then you may never get new items to the container or find the energy to maintain the container.
2. Make sure items get to the container
Depending on where this storage space is, consider a halfway point. If it is a bin in the basement, all the way in the back, you may not pass that spot often. So consider a designated tray to catch those items and when the tray is full, make a trip to the memento container and load them in.
What is important to remember is that if you consider the item valuable enough to keep, keep it in a safe place so you can enjoy it in the future.
3. Maintain the container
What felt vital one day may not feel the same one to five years later. Set an intention to review your container’s items periodically (Like New Years’ Day) to remove any items that no longer hold meaning to you. These items are occupying space in your home. If they no longer carry feelings, then it has turned from a keepsake to a ball and chain.
Also, respect the container. Otherwise known as knowing your ‘healthy boundaries.’ If you live in a 900 sq ft. space with two people and four animals, there is not much choice to go beyond a small tote of mementos.
Whatever your square footage, respect that there are healthy boundaries to how much we keep. If you keep every single napkin from every single meal at a restaurant, then that one napkin from the time you spotted that celebrity at that fancy restaurant on that amazing trip won’t have the same meaning.
Saving mementos can add a level of richness to our lives that is unlike any other experience. Take a few moments to respect those memories and how you want to keep them in your life. Not as a weight you carry around, but as treasured experiences to be valued.
Good points to ponder… now go find those perfect items you will love looking at with your kids someday to tell the story of their parents.
Questions about how to store your mementos?
Or where to draw the healthy boundary with keepsakes? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for help.
