Managing Memorabilia

Several people who attended my presentation on hoarding at the San Francisco Public Library asked about keeping furniture and other belongings from a deceased parent, even though storing or living with these items causes financial, relationship, or other stress. This raises the larger question of how to deal with the memorabilia that most people accumulate as they go through life.

There are many reasons that people want to keep a parent’s belongings:

a desire to honor the parent
denial of the reality that the parent is truly gone
as a link to a wished-for, safer past where one felt more secure or happier than in the frightening present or uncertain future
a form of solace for the pain of loss or sense of closeness to the loved one
a belief that these belongings are valuable and could be sold
the hope of using the items someday

Beyond a few well-chosen items, keeping parental memorabilia is just about guaranteed to produce unhappiness in the long run. A parent’s belongings do not:

honor or memorialize the parent – your parent’s life was surely not about clutter or hoarding and s/he would not want you to be unhappy or in danger, and especially not because of his/her belongings
change the reality of death or keep the person who is gone closer
make the present any safer – clutter and hoarding create many dangers
rarely produce significant income

Hanging onto memorabilia keeps your focus on the past rather than the present and future. Memories are not in objects but in our hearts. It is one things to keep photos or a few other small items and quite another to keep most of a loved one’s belongings. Keeping so many mementos that they must be kept in piles or rented storage means you have exceeded rational limits. Using memorabilia to live in the past instead of living in the NOW, the only moment anyone can ever really have, is sacrificing real life for a fantasy. Memorabilia encourages the emotional delusion of connecting objects with people and attaching emotional meaning to inanimate objects (sorry if this seems harsh, but this is reality).

Many people rent storage facilities to store a parent’s belongings but this creates greater emotional and financial insecurity. Greater emotional insecurity is created because accepting reality is necessary to take control of your emotions and actions. Greater financial insecurity is created by paying for rented storage space or a larger apartment, or moving after eviction because of hoarding. Greater stress is created by trying to do the impossible, i.e., live in the past instead of the present. Increased stress and insecurity creates constant emotional and real-world pain.

We cannot re-live or change the past, but people who try to re-capture the past through large amounts of memorabilia are almost paralyzed from coping effectively with present-day demands. When people keep large volumes of belongings of any kind, being organized becomes impossible. Lack of organization hampers the ability to function effectively. Since memorabilia is inherently items that have no practical use (because if the item was useful or in use, it would not be just memorabilia), keeping such items is sacrificing space which could be used for being organized. The more impossible organizing becomes, the less possible managing the day-to-day business of life becomes: paying bills and managing finances, interacting with the numerous bureaucracies we are all must cope with, or keeping track of important papers.

Doing everything we need to do every day to be physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially healthy is just about a full-time task (read The PRESENT Principle to understand this). Daydreaming about a past that isn’t and can’t be distracts from attention to tasks that really matter, i.e., those that can change reality for the better. The more difficulty you have managing in the present, the more important it is to spend LESS time thinking about the past and coping with belongings you do not actually use. Spend as little time, energy, and money as possible on the past and focus on working (not just dreaming) to make the present and future as good as they can be.

Focusing on the past often results from despairing of a better future, but this may be just a way to avoid the effort required for that better present and future or the potential for failure (unlikely). We all want what 12-step programs call an “easier, softer way” that is, a way to achieve a better life without the sacrifice or rigorous effort required for personal change – we want to make as little effort as possible for essential changes (and we want any changes to not disrupt our habits or make us uncomfortable). However, the “easier, softer way” does not really exist – the idea is a fantasy intended to avoid sacrifices or discomfort. Giving up things we are attached to requires challenging our thinking and emotions – not the most comfortable activity for most folks, but the only way to grow and become what we are capable of being. Since addiction to hoarding or anything else often causes despair, giving up excess belongings that contribute to hoarding addiction leads to greater freedom and happiness.

Guidelines for Memorabilia:

Be VERY selective. Only keep a few of the most precious items and question every choice. Keep no more objects than you can display or store well (such as in a display case or on the wall, or store in a box). If the only way you can save them is in a pile or rented storage, you have too many.

Keep only the smallest mementos possible. Furniture is the worst form of memorabilia – it’s too bulky and impractical. Books are also too big to use as memorabilia of your past or anyone else’s. Unless you are sure that you will read it again, best to donate books you have read so someone else can enjoy and learn from them. (Books you have not read are subject to the same Use Principle as everything else – if you have not used it in a year, you do not need it. Rely on the public library to store the books you want to read.)

Keep your rational mind rather than your emotions in charge. Your belongings do not represent you or anyone you ever knew. No object is special because it was owned by any particular person, no matter how beloved or famous. Thinking that an item becomes special because it was owned by someone you loved is a form of superstition or fetishizing. Remember that memories are in the heart and mind, not in the objects.

Remember that the intrinsic value (how much an item would sell for) of your memorabilia is likely quite low. Believing that nearly every item you own is special is a hallmark of hoarding thinking.

Life is meant to be lived in the present. We should all be too busy managing our daily lives for the past to take up much time. If that is not the way you live, think about what would be required to change that state. Read Helping Resolutions Succeed for pointers about achieving this or any goal.

Never save memorabilia or other objects that you “hope” to use in the future unless you are actively working on a concrete, realistic, step-by-step process to achieve that goal. That plan must include small, specific actions that you can and are willing to do and will do today, tomorrow, and every day until you have reached that goal.

Really, we should add “hope” to the list of words that sometimes show potential instead of actual thinking. Read my article The Difference Between Actual vs. Potential Value to understand why these are different.

Remember: everything becomes obsolete at some point. We out-grow some memorabilia, others become more important, and we accumulate new items. This is natural and we should not resist the tendency to outgrow things once treasured – this is a healthy part of life that we should celebrate. People often say “this item reminds me of a happier time” – well, a big part of why the present is not so good and you feel like retreating to the past is because of clutter or hoarding, including keeping memorabilia.

All of life is about change. Change is not something bad to be resisted but to be evaluated and worked with. All change has both positive and negative aspects, just as all existing conditions do. The more that we resist inevitable change, the more unpleasant it becomes and the less prepared we are to cope with it. Most of the difficulty of coping with change comes from our self-talk, in which we tell ourselves how terrible and difficult any change might be (this is called “horribilizing”) thus ensuring that we would not be ready to cope rather than any inherent quality in the change. Anything that interferes with adapting to change is harmful. Memorabilia that slows or stops the adaptation to changing circumstances is harmful and you would be better off without it.
As part of adapting to life’s changes, identify which of your belongings were appropriate to an earlier stage of life but will not be needed again. These are good to clear out as soon as it becomes clear that the prior phase of life is really over (this may not be immediately clear). Giving up items that belonged to a now-over stage of life can be wrenching because it requires admitting that that time is really past, but hanging onto the things that belonged to that era will not make it come back and won’t really ease the pang either. Retirement is a good example of a life change that usually makes many belongings obsolete, however, reaching this mile-stone does not mean that you should despair of making the rest of life better than one limited by clutter or hoarding.

People acquire and keep objects because they expect the items to change their lives. Trouble is, that change is often not for the better. Beyond a certain basic level, most objects increase problems and unhappiness.

Previous | Next

Articles Index

Office Organization | Time Management | File Systems | Hoarding