The Gentle Guide to Decluttering Sentimental Items

In this episode of The Simple Joy Show, we tackle one of the most emotionally charged aspects of decluttering: sorting through sentimental items.

These are the objects that tug at our heartstrings, making the decluttering process much more than just a physical task. Whether it’s a childhood toy, family heirlooms, or mementos from significant life events, sentimental items often make us pause and ponder, complicating our decluttering journey.

During this episode I help you navigate this emotional minefield with practical advice and compassionate insights. 

By the end of this episode, you’ll have a better understanding of how to respect your feelings and memories while making room for new experiences and a clutter-free future. 

USEFUL LINKS:

Instagram: www.instagram.com/hellosimplejoy

How to Get Started Decluttering When Overwhelmed PDF: https://hub.simplejoy.co.uk/overwhelmed

Facebook Group: The Simple Living Society: www.facebook.com/groups/thesimplelivingsociety

Shop: https://hub.simplejoy.co.uk/shop

Transcript

Hayley Forster [00:00:00]:

Hello, and welcome back to the Simple Joy Show. Today, we’ve got a really difficult subject on our hands, and it’s decluttering sentimental items. And this is probably the number one topic that’s requested for me to talk about, and it’s something that many of us really struggle with. The attachment to the items that we really hold dear in our life can make the decluttering process really difficult and a bit of an emotional mine field. So don’t worry. Today, we’re gonna explore some ways to navigate it much more gracefully.

Hayley Forster [00:03:55]:

When I get people to join my Facebook group, there’s a couple of questions I get them to answer. And one of the questions I ask is what is the most pressing point for you right now in your decluttering journey? And when you look at the data that I get back from that, the number one biggest struggle by far that keeps coming up is struggling with decluttering sentimental items, and I totally get it. It is so hard to let go of things that you hold really dear to yourself and that have meaning to you. But I just wanna say front and center at the beginning of this episode, when you’re decluttering your sentimental items, the goal doesn’t need to be to get rid of everything. It’s perfectly fine to keep sentimental items. But the key is to find the balance between keeping the things that mean the most to you and actually getting rid of the clutter. What you might find is that when you have too many sentimental items, they tend to lose their specialness, and they can often get lost amongst each other and they start to feel overwhelming, it starts to make you feel stressed because you feel like you’ve got too many. And when you’ve got too many keepsakes, I often find that you can’t really enjoy them very much because there’s just too many for you to appreciate, but actually having fewer sentimental items and only keeping the things that are really important and meaningful to you,

Hayley Forster [00:05:25]:

that can help you appreciate them more. It helps you value them more. You can perhaps highlight them in your home because you’re only keeping the best of the best and keeping the most special items to you. And just remember, you are trying to make your home a living space for how you live today, and it’s not supposed to be a big storage box for your for your past. I find that’s a really good mantra to remember when you are decluttering your sentimental items and may come across some difficult items. So how can you make decluttering sentimental items easier? The first thing I would say is just get started. I think we can be so daunted by the thought of decluttering sentimental items and by the responses I get in my inbox every single day – it is the number one problem that stops people taking action.

Hayley Forster [00:06:20]:

So instead of worrying about it and thinking forward ahead to what you’ve got to do, just get started, just get in the moment, start building that decluttering muscle and just dive straight in. But what I would say is give yourself time, give yourself space if you are struggling. If it isn’t working on a particular day, that’s fine. Just leave it. Just move on to something else. And go back to decluttering those difficult items another day. Don’t let your struggles with decluttering sentimental items completely derail you from your decluttering journey. Just put them to one side, move on to something easier. You’ve gotta be in the right mindset when you’re decluttering sentimental items because it can involve a lot of emotional work.

Hayley Forster [00:07:07]:

And sometimes, you’re just not in that right head space and you don’t have the capacity to actually do it. So just move on to something else. Cut yourself some slack and just do something that is much less emotionally challenging for you. Another way to just give yourself some time and space when you find it hard to declutter sentimental items is to do a trial decluttering. And I’ve mentioned this before in previous episodes – a maybe box. I don’t usually like maybe boxes, but when it comes to sentimental items, it can really help because if you’re wavering on something, you’re not sure whether you’re gonna be able to give it away or not. Just box it up, put it out of sight, put a date in your calendar, and set an alert that pops up to remind you to go back to that box, have a look. Open up that box, see how it makes you feel.

Hayley Forster [00:07:58]:

If you haven’t needed it, you haven’t wanted it, or you’ve not even thought about the item that’s in that box during that time period, whether it be 3, 6 months, it’s gonna be much easier for you to let that item go. It’s a bit of a safety net because it can be quite upsetting when you may worry about potentially giving away a sentimental item and worrying that you may regret it. So it gives you the opportunity to really experiment moving that item on. Another thing I would get you to remember is that your memories and your special moments in life, they are not in the object themselves. Yes, they might remind you of a memory or a special moment, but they’re actually in your mind, they’re in your heart, and you’re always gonna have those memories whether you’ve got those items in your home or not. So just remind yourself of that fact and that can really help you let go of some of the sentimental items you might be struggling with. And as I said at the top of the episode as well, it’s okay to keep some sentimental items, but within reason. It’s okay for you to keep the ones that are of value to you, that have meaning to you, and it’s just about choosing the ones that are really special to you.

Hayley Forster [00:09:17]:

Choosing the ones that you want to highlight and enjoy even more. So a way of doing that is perhaps setting yourself some kind of limit to help you be a little bit more ruthless when it comes to getting rid of the sentimental items because that then allows you to be much more intentional with the ones that you want to keep. So as an example, just give yourself a big plastic storage box and you say, this is the container that I’m gonna use to store my sentimental items and anything that fits in it, they can stay. But anything that then overflows out of that, I need to just question myself whether I do actually want to keep it, or am I willing to part with something within the box in order to allow that to fit. And just having that limited space is gonna really help you to be more selective about what deserves that space in your home. So just figure out what that limit is for you and for your life and your home and just stick to it while you’re going through your sentimental items. For me, I’ve got one box for myself and one box for each of my children as their memory boxes.

Hayley Forster [00:10:36]:

My husband doesn’t really really have anything. He’s not as sentimental as me and my children, but we do have certain things of his within my box as well. So just work out what works for you as a family and use that as your marker. But actually, an alternative way to storing them, is to perhaps repurpose them and that way you can enjoy them and you can appreciate them. So you could display things as home decor in box frames. You would even just use the item. I had a baking dish from my mum that I used to have from when I was little, and we used to to bake with that and cook together when I was little, and I didn’t want to to get rid of that.

Hayley Forster [00:11:31]:

It had a lot of good memories for me from when I was a child. So I actually just use that in the kitchen now. I make use of it every day. We cook with it. We bake with it. I do baking with my children with that container now. And it’s just become a part of my kitchen utensils. So that’s now put to use.

Hayley Forster [00:11:49]:

I appreciate it. And every time that I do use it, I get a flood of those the memories back, which is much better than it being stored in a cupboard somewhere collecting dust. I would say the only caveat to that is just make sure that you’re being selective with the ones that you choose to display or repurpose, make sure that the ones that you are using in that manner just aren’t adding clutter to your home. You want those to be the most special items, the ones that you’re actually gonna use are the ones that you’re actually gonna enjoy seeing in your home. Don’t just shift that sentimental that you can’t make a decision on from a box to your wall. Another thing that I found really useful when I was trying to get rid of sentimental items (because I had quite a lot). I was a child that really struggled to remember things. I don’t have a great memory, and that’s been the same since I was a little girl.

Hayley Forster [00:12:41]:

So when we used to have nice days out and holidays I would collect items. I would collect leaflets. I would collect stones and rocks and things like that. And then when my mam died when I was thirteen, obviously, there was a hell of a lot more things for me to to get sentimental about. There was all of her possessions and the things that I wanted keep because I was always so worried about losing those memories and losing the thought of what she looked like, what smelt like and what she felt like, that I wanted to keep everything of hers. So I did have a lot of struggles around sentimental items at first. And one of the biggest things that helped me is, taking photos. So if you’ve got sentimental items that you want to remember, but you don’t necessarily want to keep those items – they might be too big, too bulky or they don’t necessarily fit in with your home or your lifestyle, but you want keep the memories that are associated with them, then let those items go, but take a photo of them. Actually those photos are often enough for you to preserve the memories that are associated with them without having to keep the item itself.

Hayley Forster [00:14:02]:

And that was a big help for me when I was trying to get rid of stuff. I’ve got a very select small amount of things from my mam now. I’ve got a cardigan. I’ve got a ring. I’ve got that dish that I mentioned before. I’ve got some photos, and I think I’ve got a teddy bear. And that is it. A lot of the other things I was able to to part with, but I’ve still got photos of them.

Hayley Forster [00:14:24]:

And if I choose to, I can go through those and get that flood of memories. But actually, I’ve never really looked back at those photos but again, it was a safety net to allow me to part with those items knowing that I’ve got something as a backup to refresh me if needs be. Then moving on to the last thing that I wanna talk about today, and it’s just to make sure that you ask yourself why you’re saving each item. What’s the purpose of you keeping it? Is it something that you love? Is it something that’s got a lot of meaning to you, or are you keeping it out of guilt or obligation? We’ve all got different reasons for holding on to sentimental items, so you just wanna clearly ask yourself why you’re saving it. And if you don’t have a clear reason for why you want to keep that item, you probably don’t need it, or you probably won’t value it as much as you actually thought to begin with. So just be honest with yourself about why you’re keeping it. If there’s any negative emotions attached to it, such as guilt or obligation, or it’s got a sad memory associated with it, then let it go. If you are worried about the guilt and obligation, and fears that come with declutter then you might wanna listen to episode 6 where I go into that a little bit more detail, but essentially if you’re keeping an item because you feel like you should keep it rather than you want to keep it, then just feel free to get rid of it.

Hayley Forster [00:15:48]:

And to wrap up, just be ruthless while you’re decluttering your sentimental items, but also just give yourself some space. Be gentle with yourself. It can be hard work, both emotionally and mentally. And, yeah, you’re going to be having some ups and downs as you go through these things and some things are gonna be hard to let go of even when you know that you need to let them go. So just give yourself some space. It’s okay if you’re making slow progress with it. You’re making progress. That’s the most important thing, but just keep at it. Take breaks when you need to and remind yourself that there’s always gonna be sentimental items that are exceptions to the rule, that there’s gonna be things in your life you’re never gonna wanna get rid of and that adds so much value in your life and that is fine.

Hayley Forster [00:16:36]:

It might be something that’s associated with a loss in your family, and it’s still too fresh or raw for you to process right now or be objective about, and that is fine. Just do your best in the moment, be as ruthless as possible, but be gentle with yourself throughout the process as well. Every bit of work that you put into decluttering your home, you know the endpoint, you know where it’s gonna take you. So show kindness, take small steps, and just know that you’re going to reach your decluttering goals. I always like to remind people that decluttering sentimental items, it doesn’t mean that you’re erasing your memories. It doesn’t mean that you’re dishonouring your past. It just means that you’re making more room, you’re making more space in your life for the present and for the future. The essence of those memories are in you. They’re not in those things, so just let go of the guilt, let go of that emotional weight, and try and make some room for a home and a life that’s going to be filled with much more memories and exciting things to come.

Hayley Forster [00:17:50]:

So, thank you for tuning in to this episode of The Simple Joy Show. I hope you found some value in today’s episode. Do let me know how you are getting on with decluttering your sentimental items. If there’s anything that you’re struggling with, or anything that you have found that has worked really well, then do let me know. But until next time, stay simple, stay joyful and just remember making space in your home often means making space in your heart as well. Goodbye.