Organizing From The Heart: How To Care For Your Keepsakes

Mementos are among the most difficult things for us to organize. That’s not because it’s hard to figure out how to make a photo album, put things in a memory box, or save a precious heirloom. No, mementos trip us up because of their emotional significance in our lives. We agonize over decisions about which ones to keep, how to honor the items, the best ways to preserve them, and even whether or not to use them.

We worry that if we get rid of anything our children touch (much less make!), we’re heartless parents. We worry that if we don’t hold onto everything that belonged to our parents, we’re ungrateful children. We worry that if we use grandma’s china, we’ll break it. We worry that if we don’t sort through and organize every single photo, we might lose a moment that was captured on film.

This all-or-nothing, fear-based perspective puts so much pressure on us that we end up storing these emotionally-charged things away, never enjoying them for fear of doing the wrong thing with them.

Let’s set aside the worry and instead come up with creative ideas to get our precious mementos out of storage boxes and into regular circulation in our lives! After all, the point of saving these items is to enjoy them with gratitude and appreciation for what they mean to us.

Children’s Art and Schoolwork:
Instead of throwing your children’s art into a crowded bin that will be opened like a time capsule when the kids are adults, find ways to use and enjoy their creations now. Remember, you’re saving this stuff because it makes you as a parent happy to see your child’s creations, not because your child will remember and want them as an adult (They won’t!).

• Use crafts as holiday decorations: Children often make artwork that relates to the holidays or seasons. Store those drawings, paintings, and little sculptures in the bin with your holiday decorations, and you can display them as fun decorations.
• Make books: Put together a stack of your children’s papers and take this collection to Staples to be bound. For less DIY-looking options, try a service such as 4EverBound or Artkive.
• Create a designated area in your house that serves as a rotating display space for whatever the kids bring home. When you’re done looking at this week’s creations, stash them in a folder, and go through them at the end of the year.
• Use a premade school scrapbook to house the “best of the best” from each year and store it on a bookcase (not in the basement or attic) so you can enjoy leafing through it from time to time.

Photos:
We take photographs because we want to remember the moment, so don’t hide them away in boxes or the cloud! Comprehensive photo organizing is great if you can devote the time to that project, but if you can’t, don’t let that stop you from digging in and bringing some of the photos into the light for you to enjoy now.

• Stop holding digital photos hostage in the cloud! Get them into a photo book. Don’t make it complicated, sort them by year and throw the book together chronologically. You can make one book per year or have a book that spans several years.
• Does putting together a photo book sound daunting? Shutterfly now has a Make My Book service that is stress-free and super easy.
• Instead of displaying a coffee table book in your living room, grab a stack of photos and put them in a tray or basket on the coffee table or a side table for people to browse through during downtime. When you’ve looked at that batch long enough, swap it for another handful of photos.
• If you come across old family photos, do what a friend of mine does. She snaps a picture of the old photo with her phone (no fancy digitizing service needed) and shares it with family on social media and email. Her family loves it when an old gem pops up in their feed!​​

This is the travel journal that my husband made from scraps saved from our honeymoon. He cut out holes in pages to fit a coin and pebble from a beach.

China, Crystal, and Fancy Things:
It doesn’t honor your grandmother to keep her china hidden away in boxes. Why not figure out some ways to use it? The worst that can happen is that you chip or break a piece, but that’s better than never seeing it at all.

• Use your unique china to make any occasion more special. I like to bring mine out for holidays, but you could use bits and pieces of it for other events such as birthdays.
• If you really adore it, use it as your everyday china and stop worrying about it!
• If it’s very delicate, use just a portion of the china, such as the teacups or dessert plates, to make it easy for you to hand wash.
• Display a tea set or place setting as decorative items in your home.
• Take out one bowl or plate and use it regularly as a serving piece or fruit bowl.Have one of those fancy silver hair brushes or a baby brush? Keep it on your vanity or by your bedside and try the new dry brushing health fad.​

Memorabilia:
We all need a place for the miscellaneous stuff that we collect: love notes, the playbill from your first Broadway musical, a flattened penny from a vacation spot, an honorable mention ribbon, etc.

• Give each family member a memory box (not too big) where they can keep their collection. Keep the boxes in a closet or on a bookcase so you can get them out and rummage through the mementos whenever the mood strikes.
• Did you save a bunch of stuff from a recent trip? Grab a notebook and tape the bits and pieces into it (Don’t be a perfectionist -- messy looks fun!) or put it into a large mason jar that you can set on a shelf.
• If you have a photo book and souvenirs from a vacation, tape an envelope into the inside cover of the book to stash the keepsakes. Now you can look back at ticket stubs, coins, and brochures right alongside your favorite snapshots.

These are just a few ideas that can help you enjoy your mementos in a simpler, less stressful way. The idea is to bring these beloved items out into the open without agonizing over them or committing to a time-consuming project.
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What are your ideas? How do you display and enjoy your mementos? What’s your most unusual, conversation-starter keepsake?

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