On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate yourself on the scale of sentimental hoarding.
A 1 rating would be that you immediately toss out items like theater playbills, ticket stubs from ball games, wedding invitations, greeting cards you receive, etc. once they're past the occasion or event.
A 5 rating would be that you hold onto every one of these items, forever, and have no intention of ever pitching them.
Everyone has his or her own sentimental levels within them.
If you lean towards keeping these types of items for a long time, you may have, or be headed for, a storage issue.
When recently helping one client get organized, she had every greeting card (including Christmas cards) she has ever been given since she was a child. I didn't count them, but there were seven large boxes of cards and other memorabilia stuffed into her clothes closet.
Now facing the prospect of downsizing, she knew in her heart-of-hearts that taking these boxes along with her to the small apartment she would be moving into was simply not practical.
But it was breaking her heart to part with them.
I suggested sorting these
sentimental items into two piles: A) those that had extra special meaning and B) those that did not.
For instance, greeting cards that included personal
notes landed in the A pile, while those that just said Dear Jane, From Sue (for instance) landed in the B pile.
Old wedding invitations from her own sons and daughters landed in the
A pile. Those from friends she was no longer close with landed in the B pile.
When we were done sorting, she got rid of everything in the B pile pretty easily and with no pangs of
sadness.
We then took everything in the A pile and, one by one, took a photograph of each, the outside and inside. We uploaded all of them to a photo storage program so there was digital
evidence of each and every one.
She then got rid of everything in the A pile, except for her 10 favorites, which took up just a tiny bit of space.
We then grabbed a cup of tea, sat at her kitchen table with her iPad, and browsed through all of her treasures, now digital, one by one. She was so happy to have these memories stored in this manner.
She even said that it would be easier to look through them when she wanted to because it no longer involved her having to lift heavy boxes from her closet to do so.
And now, these memories will only take up digital space...which "fits" in any home, no matter how small.
