Hi.
I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of The Clutter Diet Book and on-line program, and I want
to talk about sentimental objects today in a way that you might not expect.
People ask me all the time about this and the general advice that you’ve heard from
me, and from many other organizing experts, is that if you don’t use it, and you don’t
love it, you probably shouldn’t keep it.
And that’s true 90+ percent of the time.
There’s always the exception that proves the rule, and sometimes these kinds of objects
that are bringing a lot of uncertainty to us, and that are very difficult to decide
about, can be very provocative about what’s really going on with us in our emotional lives.
So I would like you to be very mindful when you run across something like this and explore
it.
So I want to give you some examples.
When you’re thinking about trophies, mostly you’re thinking about something like this.
A trophy is a symbol of accomplishment and achievement.
It usually is a symbol of overcoming some kind of obstacle.
So there are the obvious trophies of things that are [POP] obviously positive and there
are trophies that represent overcoming something very negative in your life.
If you are going through a de-cluttering project and you run across some memorabilia that’s
very painful for you, that might be a good idea to get rid of it if it’s going to be
permanently painful.
If you feel like that’s finished business for you and you really don’t want to have
it in your life, like if you went through a divorce, for example, that can be a pretty
straightforward thing to get rid of, you know, a lot of the memorabilia that reminds you
of that relationship that might have been painful for you.
There are other things like trauma, and death, and loss that might be a little less obvious
to get rid of.
What I would caution you is, you know, if you get rid of that too soon, there may be
work that you want to do on that area of your life that might make you view those items
differently later.
So this is not a license to keep everything that you’re uncertain about.
I don’t want you to take it that way.
But I’d like you to run across these certain items and ask yourself if there’s more work
to be done.
Is this unfinished business?
And if so, this might be the prompt that you need to finish that business in your life.
So I would say don’t display those items until they became a full circle experience
for you to look at them.
They need to be something that you look at and you experience a feeling of triumph and
achievement and overcoming.
So I’ll tell you a little story about this pillow that I’m holding.
I grew up in a small town in West Texas that’s known as the wool and mohair capital of the
world.
This means goats and sheep and llamas and alpacas are all raised around this area and
there are a lot of textiles going on around their wool.
So this is a pillow made out of alpaca wool and it was purchased in my home town by my
sister and my sister-in-law – actually I have two of these – and was given to me
as a holiday gift.
There was a time in my life that if I had received this as a holiday gift I would never
have been able to display it in my home.
I experienced trauma growing up in that town and I left it as soon as I could and going
back there to visit was very triggering for me in a lot of ways.
So I did the work.
I did a lot of self-development work, I did a lot of therapy and counseling, and I worked
on this a number of times over many, many years, to the point that I feel triumphant
over that issue in my life.
Now when I look at this pillow and I know where it came from, it is bringing a feeling
of achievement to me that is such a full circle beautiful thing that it fits beautifully in
my house now.
Not only is the color pallet wonderful and everything is great about it having been a
gift from special people in my life, but it represents the fact that I’m no longer held
down by that issue, that I have taken back my power in my life over what happened to
me long ago.
There may be things like this in your life that you want to display in your home because
they do make you feel good now.
If you put them away and keep them as a reminder that you know it’s tucked away and you know
you need to do the work, that might actually be a healthy thing for you.
I have a friend who went through a rehab experience for addiction and he has the bracelet that
he wore in the rehab hospital and he put it in a shadow box in his home and he is not
embarrassed for anyone who comes over to see him to see that in his shadow box.
He will be the first to tell you how proud he is of that experience and how it changed
his life.
So it may obviously first look like something that’s a negative reminder, but it’s not.
So if you have these kinds of trophy objects in your life, don’t be afraid to display
those, because they have a wonderful story behind them and they may inspire other people.
Don’t keep everything for this reason, be very judicious about it, but I share this
with you as just food for thought and I hope it’s served you.
Please share in the comments if you have trophy objects that you’d like to talk about.
We’ll see you next time and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than
enough.