Minimizing Sentimental Items
Somehow I am both the most sentimental person and a pretty serious minimalist. I have a pot and a pan. I don’t own a microwave. I own about five pairs of pants. I own four place settings. In fact, all of my dishes fit on two shelves.
At the same time, my sentimentality and attachment to items, like my grandma’s sweater or the pistachio my best friend left me, keep my more minimalist nature at bay. Some of my most sentimental items found their way into moving truck after moving truck for years, and, in some cases, decades because I love what they represent.
So, how can I be both a sentimental stock piler, and a minimalist? I’ve written here, here, and here about the first strategy I use to decide how to keep or minimize sentimental items. Essentially, if I love something, I display so I can see that love everyday. I recently took a sweater my grandmother gave me over 20 years ago from the back of my closet, and displayed it in a prominent place. I now see it every morning in the mirror I use to dress myself. It was a long process for me to get to this decision, and, now, when I see a sentimental item, I force myself to consider if I want to go through that process again. That lesson did help me minimize a few items.
But, by definition, minimalism is about how we don’t keep items. So, in many ways, the story of how I actually kept grandma’s sweater is not very helpful to those looking for how to actually minimize, or not keep their sentimental items.
Enter the power of visualization.
As defined by Miriam-Webster, a visual produces a metal image.
My friend ran a marathon on visuals alone. That is correct. She ran a marathon without a single training run. (I, on the other hand, did TWO twenty plus mile training runs for EACH of my marathons.) When I asked her how she did that without dying, she said she visualized herself running the marathon every day on her train ride to and from work.
What is more surprising than the fact that she didn’t injure herself, is that science backs her up. In addition, “…researchers found that medical students who received two imagery sessions demonstrated greater skill in performing surgery on live rabbits than students who had studied a textbook.” That’s right, doctors who visualized surgery out performed those that studied the text book.
Even Forbes discusses what a powerful tool visualizing is for making money, and I recently used this tool to help me keep my sentimentality at bay.
So, how can visualization help me minimize sentimental items?
When we create strong visuals for what we want in our lives, then we can make sure that the items we choose to keep and organize match those visuals. And, if the items we have don’t match the visualization we have for our lives, then we can feel free to give them away.
Let me bring this strategy to life for with a story. One way that I minimize is to limit the amount of something I have. To that end, I made a treasure chest for all my memory items. If i have mementos, they live in this box. Well, enter toddler life (in an 800 square foot apartment, 4 floors up with 2 dogs), and I decided the treasure box needs to be minimized to make room for toddler stuff.
So, I sat with my mementos. I knew I could not display all of them, so my first strategy wasn’t a lot of help to me. I decided to follow Marie Kondo’s principle about sparking joy. I read her book many years ago, and it helped me get down to the 5 or so pants that I now own. I decided to do quick Google search and see what is out there about her principle of sparking joy today. I found this one minute forty-three second video where she shows us what our body’s feel like when an item sparks joy.
Here is where the problem came in — everything made me feel a deep joy — from the posters I collected during a life changing college internship to my stack of concert tickets from high school. Everything. Sparked. Joy.
But some of my treasured mementos had to go.
As I sat, surrounded by items that all sparked joy and, honestly, made me feel deeply, I glanced at my vision board from several years ago. I realized so much of what filled my treasure chest fueled my past. The posters highlighted lessons I needed in college. Those posters don’t feed the goals on my vision board. And when I looked at those concert tickets, I realized that I don’t even like those bands anymore. Again, those tickets were mementos of lessons passed.
However, as I looked at the metal I received from running my first 5k, I realized that the joy I felt from that metal would bring me closer to the vision I created for my life. You see, my vision board included an image of a woman crossing the finish line with the statement “sole training.”
I needed the items that would move my vision forward. Joy, for me, is in so many items I own. But the joy that I really need is the joy that will move my vision ahead.
A strong vision for my future allows me to decide which of the supremely sentimental items I own will help me reach the vision. Thus, I minimize items that are not moving me toward my vision, and thoughtfully organize the items that bring me closer to my vision.
If you are like me, and you struggle to minimize those sentimental items, , you can click here to download a vision board template for your phone. It can help you define your vision and decided what items in your home will bring you closer to your vision.
