31 Days of Organizing Tips: Day 29 (Sentimental Items)
Welcome to Day Twenty Nine of the 31 Days of Organizing Tips series! Throughout this series I’ve been sharing organizing tips that will help you on your journey from overwhelmed to organized.
Today I’m sharing tips to help you organize your sentimental items, such as items you’ve inherited from friends or family, things your kids made or used, memorabilia from your own childhood, cards and letters from your significant other, etc.
Before you organizer your sentimental items, try to declutter them so you’re less overwhelmed. I wrote a whole series on Decluttering Sentimental Items if you need help with that. I also share tips for using or displaying them to really honour the person or the memory.
Here are several ideas on how to organize or display your memorabilia.
1. Make a book out of special cards using binder rings. This works well for birthday cards (kids or adult milestone birthdays), wedding cards, milestone anniversary cards, graduation cards, cards from your sweetheart, cards from your grandmother, holiday cards, etc. It’s easy to keep adding cards as you receive them too. Much nicer than a shoebox in the basement.
2. Use Ziplock bags or small boxes/bins to group like items together and then label them and put them in a larger plastic bin. This is great for baby clothes, special occasions, vacations, or various time periods of your life. Even if you store these in a storage room, basement, or attic, it’s not just a random bin full of things but something you can look through and remember each event or special time.
3. Take a picture when someone gives a special gift and then make a photo book of special gifts. If you take a picture with the person who gave it to you then you will not only remember the item but the person who gave it to you and your memories associated with them too. This is great for inherited items if they are given while the parent/grandparent is alive. It also works well for children’s artwork.
Photos of Artwork or Special Gifts
4. If you have sentimental clothing from a loved one (or your own), rather than keeping all the clothing in a bin, turn it into a quilt, pillow, or bear so you can enjoy it.
Bears From Loved Ones’ Clothing
Please remember to pin from the original source for all of these lovely pictures!
For Day Twenty Nine, look at your current organizational system for your sentimental items. Is it working? Do you need to purge more? If your system needs to be revamped, choose one of the tips in this post and get started on it. It’s a tough task but keep your focus on the memories and not the things. Unless you have unlimited space, you won’t be able to keep everything, so it’s important to figure out how to manage and organize it all that will work for you. Good luck!
How do you organize your sentimental items? What’s the best organizing tip you’ve implemented?
If you need help decluttering or organizing, contact me for in-person organizing services in the Mississauga area, or virtual organizing services anywhere else.
Happy organizing!
I am a professional organizer and author, ready to help you declutter and organize the overwhelming areas in your home and develop systems that will work with your family’s lifestyle to help keep you organized!
