082. How to Organize Memorabilia: What to Keep, What to Let Go, and What to Pass On

Learn how to organize memorabilia with meaning. Discover the 3 purposes of keepsakes so you can keep what matters, let go of the rest, and live more intentionally.

Keeping memories matters, but keeping everything doesn’t. In this episode, I'm sharing how to organize your memorabilia with intention so you can honor your past without drowning in it. You’ll learn the three purposes of memorabilia and how to use them to decide what to keep, what to let go of, and what to lovingly pass on.

✨ What you’ll learn:

• Why memories aren’t in the objects, but in the stories behind them
• How to curate keepsakes that recall stories, incite emotion, or deserve to be passed on
• Practical ways to preserve memories without keeping everything
• Why letting go of “stuff” doesn’t mean letting go of love
• How to record your stories for future generations

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Remento: https://www.remento.co
• Storyworth: https://www.storyworth.com

Your memorabilia aren’t burdens. They’re bridges between who you were, who you are now, and who comes after you.

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Transcript

Keeping memories is something almost everyone wants to do, but a lot of the time, we’re not very sure how to.
We save photos, ticket stubs, a child’s first drawing, all because we don’t want to forget. But over time, our collections of these things grow, and what started out as a handful of meaningful mementos turns into bins and boxes of things that we’re afraid to let go of.
In this episode, we’re going to talk about what it really means to keep memorabilia. Not just the objects themselves, but the meaning and the stories that give those objects their power.
And we’ll look at the three purposes of memorabilia that can guide you so you’ll have a more intentional way to curate what you keep. That way, your keepsakes don’t become just bins of clutter that are gathering dust in a dark corner of your house anymore.
Welcome to Organizing for Beautiful Living with me, Zee Siman — The Choosy Organizer.
This podcast is for women who are done organizing everything and ready to be choosy — about what matters, what’s enough, and what can wait.
Because Beautiful Living starts with a little less stress, and a lot more intention.
Ready to get beautifully organized? Let’s make it happen.

My very, very good friend, who I met back when we were both research engineers at the same company, she’s staying with us for a little bit while she’s consulting for a firm here in Miami. And whenever we sit down in the evenings, we end up recounting so many stories from those Chicago days. It is so much fun, and we laugh so much.
And it’s made me think about our memories, and our memorabilia. Which is why I wanted to record this episode.
So many of my clients find photos and objects when they’re organizing, and often, those things get collected and put into a storage box. The intent is that they’ll go through it all later, after the rest of their home is decluttered and organized, but in the rush of our lives, going through boxes of memorabilia takes a backseat to our current schedules and responsibilities, doesn’t it?
I mean, there’s school and there’s work and soccer games and debate competitions. It could realistically be months or even years before they sit down to go through those things.
I have a bunch of memories I don’t want to let go of myself.
When I was in elementary school, we lived in a small town called Corner Brook in Newfoundland. It’s where I learned to speak English.
Our house was at the bottom of this steep hill where my school was. I mean, literally at the bottom of that hill. We would walk through our back yard, climb the little path that people’s feet had carved out in the hillside there, and we’d be in the school’s back parking lot, just behind the gym.
And in winter, we’d slide down that hill over and over again in the snow and in the ice. And there was a dip in the parking lot up there so that sometimes, if the snow melted a bit and then refroze, we could go skating there!
Corner Brook was where one day we opened up the front door of our house, and there was a thick wall of snow that went from the ground up to above the doorway, so we had to use the back door to go out, and one time, my sisters and I dug out an igloo in this packed snow drift in the back yard, and my little sister refused to come out of it for hours.
It’s also where my friend Michele and I would go up to the top of Blueberry Hill, we’d sit in the grass, and scream until we laughed, just because we could. We were very silly.
And where once, my mom and dad were driving us on the road up where the McDonald’s was, and a moose stopped in the middle of the road and just stared at us. It was huge, it was taller than our car.
We would go up to the Northern Peninsula in June and July, smack dab in the middle of summer, and we’d have to wear wool sweaters because it was cold, but still, Michele and I insisted on swimming in the sea. It was more like sitting in the shallows though because the water was so freezing, we couldn’t bear to go in past our waists. 
We would go down to Port aux Basques, to the shore, and when the lobster fishermen would bring in their traps, we could pick which lobsters we wanted and they’d grab them and put the little rubber bands on their claws for us so we could bring them home.
We would take these day trips into the woods and pick wild blueberries and I’d eat them out of my hat until I was so full I couldn’t eat lunch.
One time in winter, even with the snow chains on the tires, we couldn’t make it all the way up the hill towards our house because of all the ice on the road, and the car started sliding backwards down the street again, and it was spinning sideways and we were so afraid we would slide right back into the oncoming traffic on the main street, but luckily we stopped just in time!
I have so many memories of living in Corner Brook, but I don’t have a lot of pictures of that time.
When my kids were about the age I was when we lived there, I started telling them these stories bit by bit. The people and places are so vivid in my mind, but I know my kids aren’t getting the full picture of it all. Still, it’s important for me to tell them how living there formed me. What was happy during that time, and what wasn’t.
Memories are what make life rich, right? We didn’t have a lot of money, but we experienced these incredible things. And those are just a few of the memories that I want to keep around me.
Now as time went on, we took more pictures, we collected more things from the places we visited. It’s natural for people to do that.
And at some point, everyone starts to think about which of these collected things they should keep. And how they should keep them.
It’s never easy deciding what to keep. I’ve struggled with it myself, and I’ve seen clients struggle too. So I stopped asking, “What should I keep?” and instead started asking, “Why do I keep?”
That question led me to realize that memorabilia serves three purposes for us, and I use these as my guide to help me choose what deserves a place in my home. I’m going to share these with you today so they can help you figure out what’s worth keeping.

So here’s something I tell my clients all the time:
Memories are not the objects we keep. Memories the stories that pretty much created those objects, right?
So, the ticket stub isn’t the memory, right? The story you can tell about the concert, that’s the memory.
The object is simply a doorway, or a reminder of something that happened.
And that’s why the goal isn’t to keep everything that holds a memory.
It’s to understand why it holds one, and then choose what helps us to carry those stories forward.
So let’s look at the three purposes of memorabilia.
The first purpose is to help us recall the stories.
You might have a cookbook with notes in your mother’s handwriting, or a rock you picked up on a hiking trail. When you see it, you’re reminded of a moment that mattered to you.
But here’s what’s important. The story is what you’re trying to preserve, right? It’s not always the thing itself.
Now you might choose to keep both the cookbook and the rock, but if the stories can also live in another form - like written down maybe, or recorded - then even if the object doesn’t survive, the memory will.
So, as you go through your keepsakes, try this:
Pick up one thing and tell the story out loud. Even if no one’s around, ok, tell it to yourself, or even record it on your phone.
Then ask, “Do I want the object to be the thing that triggers the memory? Would maybe just a picture of it work just as well?”
Or if you have multiples of something, like your high school sweatshirt, plus your letterman jacket, plus a class tshirt, plus your team jersey, and a school trophy, could you pare it down? Do you need all of those to have those memories live on?
So “Is it the story that I love, or is it the object that I love?”
Sometimes, it’s both. But often, you can keep the memory without the object, or at least with a smaller subset of objects, like maybe just one or two high school keepsakes instead of 8. Yeah?

The second purpose of memorabilia is to incite the emotions.

Our memories aren’t just stories. They’re feelings. You remember the joy of being together, the laughter of a funny event, even the ache of something painful, or the anger of a terrible situation that you went through.
And all of those emotions are part of what make life meaningful. So when you’re curating your memorabilia, because that’s what we want to do, want to curate the items that you’re keeping, don’t just focus on the happy ones. Include the objects or the stories that hold significance, even if they you know, bring a lump to your throat.
Maybe it’s the program from a funeral, or the love letters from a time that ended.
These are sometimes markers of growth, or of compassion, or forgiveness.
Because I think that memorabilia shouldn’t be about creating a museum of happiness. It’s about honoring the full range of your life, right? Not just the pretty parts. This is your history we’re talking about. And I think your loved ones are going to want to know about your entire history.
And the third purpose of memorabilia is to pass on the memory so it’s not forgotten.
At some point, our memories become a part of someone else’s inheritance.
Not the stuff, but the stories. Why we did certain things and how these things affected us, who and what we loved, and learned, and endured.
And this is where being intentional makes a really big difference.
Sometimes there’s no photo, no object, no trigger at all. Sometimes all we have is just a story.
And so it’s incredibly important that we capture those before they fade.

You can do that in writing, of course. Or you can record yourself telling the story, which is so cool because then you’re capturing your voice, and your laughter, and your pauses. 
Think of it as preserving the story and your essence, right? The way you tell a story is really important, too, not just what you say.
And if you do this consistently, little by little, you’re building a true memory archive for your family.
And there are some services that help you to do this. I’m just going to name a couple that I looked into when we wanted to give this to my mom so she could capture some of these memories herself, and I’m sure there are others out there.
The one we chose for Mom is called Remento. And I’ll put a link in the show notes if you want to check it out.
What we liked about Remento is that it’s video and audio recording, as opposed to mom having to type her stories. And the service transcribes the audio into words so the stories are written out exactly as she says them.
Remento has some prompts that it provides, but you can also set up who can add prompts. So my sisters and I are all adding prompts all the time, and when Mom wants to tell a story, she just picks a prompt, or tells a story that she wants to share, hits the record button and tells the story. And she can do that with a group of people. So my aunts and uncles and friends.
And any of us can also upload a photo as a prompt, too.
The prompts we give her are sometimes like these big event prompts, like “Tell us the story of your wedding day.” But often, they’re just tiny snippets that we’d like to know, like, “describe to us your childhood bedroom,” or “did you have a favorite toy,” or “how did you get to school and back home every day?”
And at the end of the year, Remento turns all of that into a keepsake book, like a physical, printed book, that we can keep. 
The other service we looked into is called Storyworth. And I’ll also put a link of, to that, in the show notes. At the time that we were looking into the options, Storyworth was only a written platform which is the main reason why we didn’t look further into it, but I checked again just before recording this episode, and I’m pleased to say that they’ve added voice recording as another way to capture stories.
Being able to record voice or video becomes extremely important if a person develops mobility issues. Typing might become a problem, right?
And really, if you have the storage space yourself, you could simply record without any of these services, of course. The services just make it incredibly simple for you to be able to do this.
So here’s a way to think about your memorabilia:
We don’t keep things to hold on to the past.
We keep them to remember the events and feelings that had an impact on us in the past, we carry the meaning of these into our present, and then we want to share these with the future.
So if you’ve got boxes of photos, or handwritten birthday cards, souvenir shot glasses from each of the 50 states, it’s ok. You can do this. You can go through them and decide why the memories attached to them are important, or not, and you’ll be able to figure out if you want to keep them or not by using the three purposes of memorabilia.
In my opinion, it’s fun to do this with other members of your family, or a good friend. I mean, realize that you might have different opinions, right? Like they may want to keep every picture, but you’re only interested in 5 or whatever. But be open to listening to each others’ memories, to each others’ feelings attached to each of those items. 
What you’re looking for is to curate these memorabilia into a history of you and your family. Some things will naturally fall off the list. Some things you can snap a picture of and let go of the object itself, and some things you may want to write a note and keep that together with the object.
Now, if this feels overwhelming to you, you can certainly call in an organizer to help you. There’s a whole community of photo organizers who will help you with photos and videos and things like that. So you don’t have to go it alone, ok?
I don’t want you to think of your memorabilia as burdens that you have to manage or keep. They’re bridges between who you were, who you are now, and who will come after you.
So curate your memories like a storyteller, like a historian, not like a collector.
Keep what helps you to remember, release what has already done its job, and then record what might otherwise be forgotten.
So, as you go through your memorabilia - the boxes, the bins, the folders on your phone - pause with each thing and ask yourself:
Does this help me recall a story?
Does it stir a strong emotion in me?
Is it something that I want to pass on?
If it’s yes to any of those, then it’s worth keeping.
If not, it’s safe to let it go.
The real keepsake isn’t the thing, right? It’s the life you’ve lived, the memories that you’re sending forward. Remember that.
Please share this episode with a friend who maybe has her own boxes of “someday I’ll go through these” stacked in her closet somewhere.
I hope you have a beautifully organized week.
I’m Zee, and I’ll see you on the next episode.