Decluttering Memorabilia - How a Professional Organizer Guides a Client Through the Process 

Please keep family pictures! My 82 year old brother with dementia gets the most pleasure from old family pictures from his young childhood and even those from when he was older. Aunts, uncle, grandparents, and parents all matter to him. Even those saved in a box spark joy. I'm so glad I didn't destroy my mom's pictures! I very much enjoyed your ideas. 💕

Personally as a child/grandchild it was really stressful when my family would just handed me down everything they no longer needed, especially when I didn't have any connection to it. So if you're thinking of giving something to your kid, do keep in mind they might not want it.

Finally you said the most important words, right near the end. “Throw them away!” Passing things on, taking pictures and scanning or filing or displaying just perpetuates the problem. I’ve just been going through the same journey with my grown children’s school items after spending years decluttering my parents “stuff” after they passed. I too, used to be very sentimental but learned, once you get rid of it, you don’t miss it. But you do, finally feel free!! Yes, it’s hard. But honestly, just throw the cards, pictures, letters and bits and pieces away! They served their purpose when they were given, that purpose is over now, live in the present. It’s ok to throw them away!🙏🏼🤗

This video is such a gift to me as I face mountains of memorabilia from my life and those of my parents, grandparents, and relatives passed before I was even born. I keep repeating what you said, 'those are their memories, not yours' and it helps me feel not terrible for not keeping these items I have no personal connection to but am only keeping out of some sense of duty to the departed. I appreciate this video so much, thank you!!!!

I love that thought process of “If it got burnt in a fire, Would it break your heart?” I lost my Dad at the age of 13 and started keeping everything. And if anyone gave me something, I couldn’t let if it. Now, I’m 50!! And I still have boxes that I boxed up when I was 14 moving out of my first house with my Mom and brother. You can tell by my writing, even some have sparkly nail polish labeling what’s in the boxes. I really need to start looking at these things. I did start taking pictures of the art projects of my 4 children and slowly but surely tossing the dusty projects. There may be a few that I kept, but it made it easier. This was so helpful!

This was a very compassionate approach. It's taken me years since my mom passed to start to sort through the memorabilia, home goods, furniture, and of course photos. I inherited almost everything she owned, and it's a LOT. I'm ready to go through this process now. A sincere thank you!

Ah! The memorabilia! Thankfully, I was able to go through several tubs I had saved from just one daughter. It took a few years of going through these boxes, and little by little, I let go of more and more. It really helped to give these items back to my daughter and let her decide what to do with them. For the most part, she wasn't interested in keeping much. In the end, I kept several christmas projects she made in grade school. I love and display these items every Christmas, and we all enjoy looking and laughing at these few keepsakes every Christmas.

I started my minimalism journey in 2016. Never touched the photos, because I had Little time and energy. My sisters, my mom and me took all the photos from 1980 to 2005 and sorted and devided them. I sorted them again - Finally I have a little album with Great and thankful memories. A few Weeks ago I started deleting and sorting my own memories. I have two sons… we had about 50.000 digital Photos. I am down to about 5.000 and 500 videoclips. It is crazy but so important to do! I need More energy for this than for the things in my Home. But I am looking forward for wonderful leatheralbums and a few digital photos and funny videoclips. Thanks and Greetings from Austria 🤗

Lots of great ideas, thanks. Cant wait to see more about decluttering.

I think I’m pretty good about mementos, especially having started to pare down in middle school (in uni now). My big weakness is my art - but at least it stores flat, and I do look at it regularly and put some on my walls. I have been struggling with a few stuffed animals that were gifts, or have stories. Our house has clothes moths, so anything fabric is an extra problem, especially if we don’t use it regularly! After this video I think I might draw them, and then only keep the ones I actively use

This is b one of the best videos I've seen on this topic! Thanks

This describes me too! I am so glad to come across this video. Planning to start today

THANK YOU. Have been wrestling with this for YEARS. You have made a huge difference to my approach, just as I was beginning to despair. You don’t reference the emotional toll this can take. It really is physically and mentally exhausting and the only way to get through for me is in chunks, with the occasional 4 or 5 hour bash. I am almost at the end of the beginning of the process ! With 5 children of my own and the custodian of a childless, very sentimental aunt’s memorabilia AND 3 generations of my mother and father’s families. It is taking a very long time. I am also an historian. In the end it is by putting on my academic hat that I manage to sort through the very old - keeping any important document (very few) and photographing, scanning most of the older photographs ONLY if I knew who the image was and approximate date. Luckily (in a way) my families have been rubbish at keeping albums, so I just got boxes and boxes of tiny black and white photographs …. (?!?*!) most of which I can let go of as I have them recorded and annotated now. The more recent photographs I have distributed to my children, cousins, nieces and nephews - so none were overwhelmed by volume. Giving my children their “own memories” is a game-changer, thank you. This is the very first of (100s) all the RU-vid videos that I have searched for support and inspiration that has applied directly to me. Again - THANK YOU from 🇬🇧 the UK.

I appreciate both of you for this inspirational video. It was helpful to witness your process, and I learned a lot. Thanks again! 😊

New and grateful subscriber! Thank you for this practical and realistic video. I needed help, before decluttering a closet full of 25+ years of memorabilia. Sentimental items are the hardest to filter through. Your tips were amazing and super helpful, especially about displaying vs. storing. That changed my perspective on what I truly find important (and what would I grab if there was a fire). By the way, my adult children will be getting a box of their personal memorabilia this Christmas :) A win win! Thanks again.

Great ideas here and approaches that I've not seen from other organizing experts!

This was perfect 💖💖💖I have two boxes of my moms pictures and journals plus decluttering my own thank you

I just want to say thank you, thank you! I follow a few others and I had my minilist muscles in tact; however, the photos were hardest. I had 8 bins and started a fee years back and got it to half but it was still not right. This was the best video yet on the actual nitty gritty on what to do with this stuff. I don't want to lug around bins and this has helped soo much! I'm moving again and I just wanted to lighten the load and live. ❤

Oh my goodness! What a monumental task! I get it... I don't have a quarter of that much stuff, but I'm still overwhelmed by it. Sentimental stuff is so hard... I am looking back at photos from my childhood (I'm in my 40s) and there are a lot of photos of people I can't even identify anymore... no idea who they are...or people I haven't spoken to in decades... and I still have trouble throwing them out. You two did great!

This is exactly what I was looking for!!🤗 I seriously need to declutter my late mum and sister's things. Theyve been gone 5 and 7years so now I feel ready to get rid of the excess baggage that's been weighing me down. My mum has an overwhelming amount of papers and letters as well as research and a 4 volume autobiography in files as well as on disc. It'll take a while as I want to read through letters (from the early 50s). Also loads of rejection letters from publishing companies etc I think I just need to toss. Photo's are another thing...I dind those hard to get rid of, but you've really inspired me. Thank you! Liked and subscribed.🤩

This was INVALUABLE - thank you so much! I especially appreciate your soothing tone, and compassionate, patient, gentle spirit … and the reminder that we are all gifted differently, and we each play an important and **needed** part HIT ME, in a very good way. ✊😭 God bless you!! ♥️♥️♥️

Excellent Video 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻Thank you

Very insightful and useful video, thank you. I've been facing this challenge and though I am quite organized, I recently realized that I need to focus on my things first instead of worrying about other people's or collective family items. Objects are easy enough to deal with, it's the thousands of pages of paper clutter that are the most draining, I appreciate the focus on these types of items here.

This was one of the best and most helpful memorablilia videos I have come across. It was practical and addressed exactly what I needed. Thank you!

This is my longest video and the worst sound quality (please excuse our technical issues along with the noise of the swamp cooler!) Watch the parts that pertain to you, but don’t miss the 6 tips at the end to help you manage YOUR keepsakes!! It was such a joy for me to help Carole go through all of her memorabilia to choose the things that really matter to her. It can be a difficult process but it will be so worth it! Set aside a weekend or all of your evenings during the week, put it on the calendar and commit to decluttering this area of your life! I would love to hear your thoughts, your questions, your challenges and your successes!! Find me on FB or IG to post your comments and before & after photos!! You can also write me at teresaelling@gmail.com

I love thisss! As some one who is obsessed with cleaning/organizing/decluttering and am always to asked to help organize ect. Ppls house it’s so hard to figure out a way to help ppl get rid of memorabilia they have in boxes in the garage and never look at until we go through it.

So glad I came across your page. I’m 37 and have been decluttering consistently since 2018. My parents are working towards the same and my dad just said that he came across about 7,000 (exaggeration 😉) pictures the other day that had been stored away. This video will be perfect to send to them! I can’t wait to view your other videos. Thank you!

Find myself tearing up over this but you are spot on! Alot of your suggestions are things I was thinking of doing as well. Gonna start on this pronto!!

Just found your channel, and I, too, have lots of sentimental items from several generations. I (as others have commented) am our family historian and genealogist. Please try to pass on old photos or letters to other interested relatives who share your ancestor; those can contain priceless info. That being said, if you have 45 bins , and you KNOW there are definitely items of value in those, but they're dispersed throughout the bins/house/attic, and if you had to evacuate, you can't grab and take them with you BC YOUR IMPORTANT ITEMS ARE ALL SCATTERED AMONGST YOUR UNIMPORTANT ONES! Going thru the bins, and grouping all the important things together then enables you to have them accessible. Excellent. PS: when you were talking to her, the sound was distant and faint, even with the volume all the way up, plus there was a lot of background noise. Suggest having the camera closer, or getting a microphone. Thx for your tips.

This video was incredibly informative! I’m armed with your insights and inspiration and can’t wait to start this decluttering process immediately. It’ll feel so good at the other end!

This was so beneficial to me, as I recently started the process to organize photos. Since my parents & grandparents are gone, and now one of my brothers, it is time to organize and enjoy the memories. God Bless you for doing this thorough, and hands on organizing video!! Thank you 🙏

This is totally pumping me up. I'm about to go through a photo album and get rid of exboyfriend pics😊 I'll just keep the ones I look real good in😅

Great advice

This is insightful. I’ve been struggling in sorting out memorabilia of my family. I’m the only person who actually wants to organize this things. Especially now that my father recently passed it is hard to determine which ones to keep or throw away.

This made me feel better about my own stash 4:10 Wow!!

I want to be like you! So sweet and doing such wonderful work! New sub here! Trying to figure out what to do with my kid’s trophies.

An excellent video! Greetings from a sister in Christ who is also very sentimental! You gave some very good tips! I've pared down my keepsakes over the years to the point where they don't take up much room, and for now they're okay like that, for me. But more than once I've told my daughter that when I'm gone she should feel free to throw away things, unless she WANTS to keep them.

This is the BEST video on pairing down sentimental/memorabilia that I have EVER come across! Thank you for taking the time to make this video. A job well done for your friend👍🏼. I am so proud of her. I would love to help my mother with this project. 🥰

Thank you for this inspirational video! Just wanted to add that as someone who inherited tons of memorabilia , photos etc… Yes! I found as I am going through I have decided to digitize most everything that has significance and letting go of a lot! I even photograph material items that I don’t have space for but have a sentimental memory …it’s fun to have them on my phone

I don’t have the memorabilia, but I do have the photographs!!! Thank you for the excellent guidelines and encouragement!

Very helpful. It’s also nice to see other people with tons of memorabilia.

This is one of the best videos ever made regarding decluttering family memorabilia. As the family "historian" who is looking to really prioritize what is kept and what is not - I come back to it again and again. IT would be amazing to have a "Follow-up" with this client and see where she is at now - have the 12 boxes been whittled down even further now? I would love to see the continuing steps in her process.

This popped up today, well needed - but the sound is muffled no matter what I do. I appreciate there's major decision making process about keeping, donating, tossing,, filing/using boxes, giving items to family now (not waiting)...

Oh your friend is so me , this is so timely and helpful ! Three generations of sentimental items. thank you!

What great advice you have for mementoes! I have hundreds family pictures. Back in the day, no one wrote the people who were in the pictures. I’m going through and pick out the people I can identify. I have now become the matriarch of my family (How in the world did that happen?? 😳) Thanks for the great video! I have scores of random collections, how should I deal with all that? They are on displaying my house. That’s why people tell me my house looks like a museum, I guess!

These are some great tips. I am 26 and still living at home at the moment. I have been going through our pictures and taking them out of the sticky albums and the boxes and putting them in clear plastic sleeves in notebooks. I also plan to go through and declutter as much as I can while I am doing this. In the near future we plan to go through my grandparents things. I am kind of the family historian and I really hate to throw away any pictures of them growing up or of their family. We haven't been through their house yet but my grandmother saved all of her parents pictures and my grandfather saved all of his parents pictures (His mom saved all of her parents pictures and belongings). I have no exact count on how many pictures they have but I do know that there are over 50 photo albums (not counting what is in frames and in boxes and envelopes. It is so overwhelming to think about. But again thank you for posting this video. This has truly helped me in wanting to preserve memories for future generations.

This is really great video and you are so caring and taking so much time to help her thru. 45 boxes i would loose my mind lol. Volume is too low though.

Thanks

I just started going through 20 file boxes of photos following my parents' death over 2 year ago. It is a huge task for me, and very emotional as well. I try and keep in mind that when I die in 20 or 25 years, having no kids, all this will be tossed anyway. But, if I can get it down to just the "gems" and put them in a couple of neat albums, perhaps my nephews family will want to keep them for future generations of our family. BTW, no digitizing here, and I'm throwing away the negatives as well. The madness stops with me :)

This was a great video. I've been decluttering a lot of my own deceased parents things. At first it was very hard but now I'm at the point where I can't wait to get rid of the rest of it. I'm just having a problem with some of those gigantic wedding and photo albums made of some kind of vinyl or plastic. I want to digitize the photos and get rid of these obnoxiously large and heavy albums but don't want to just throw them in the trash. Any suggestions, please? Thank you!

I downsized a couple months ago. And my husband died over 7 years ago. When I downsized my daughter moved out and she did not want me getting rid of what I had left of her father's things. One of those things is a trumpet from when he was in high school band. It's not too much stuff, maybe 6-7 gallon bins worth of stuff (I had already released a LOT more of his stuff!), but it's STILL too much so I don't know what to do. I need to empty my storage facility but I don't have room for what I have left of his stuff in my new place.. I wanted to put his stuff into my daughter's storage facility as hers is literally a few units away from mine but hers is too full. If anybody has any advice on how to handle this situation, I would greatly appreciate any and all input!

My grown children don't want any of my stuff. They don't want the furniture or the tchotchkes or the china. In fact, I don't want any of my mother's stuff. When my dad died, we threw so many of his treasures out. It was heart-wrenching to do it and just exacerbated our grief. It was like throwing his life away. No one needs to go through that. I want to be merciful to my children and just leave them a couple of things that they will remember me by. I never want to put them through the horror of deciding which of my things to keep. It's not fair!

As an only child, all of our families memorabilia has come to me. I also inherited all the photos, family silver, china etc. While I think I am ok letting most of this go, I always worry that at some point one of my grandkids will want to know about their family heritage and want this family stuff. I do not have the space for all of this. But its hard to just let it go.

I wish this video was louder. I had a hard time hearing it. Will have to rewatch when one of my kids get home so that I can borrow one of their wireless speakers to boost the volume.

I am in a similar situation, I'm a retired homeschool Mom, whose last child has graduated, my mother-in-law and my Mom and Dad died in the last few years , and I am very sentimental! We would like to move sometime in the near future, but I have to gain control of the items that have accumulated. Pray for me!

I am watching and crying because I have an abundance of memorabilia of our daughter who recently passed. We are blessed to be raising her son. However, I want to be there for him, not overwhelmed with stuff. I feel I'm unable to throw anything away. You say in time my memories will change. But I will never make new memories with her. How do I know what needs to be kept... for him Also, We moved into a smaller house a few years before she passed So I really don't have room to store or display Do you have any suggestions that could help me? Thank you for this video It's been a blessing even through the tears

I have Vietnam cassettes that my Dad spoke on to send to my Mom before they married when he was stationed in Vietnam. I’m currently listening to them and recording them. The sound quality was going down hill, so I knew I had to save them.

Could the little footprints be made into stepping stones for a garden?

I did all of this on my own and then I did all of my mom’s. Very little was sentimental anymore when there was to much. Separated all my kids stuff and then they threw everything away. I really think getting rid of things as you are living in the here and now is the way to go. I don’t save cards or letters of any kind now. Or journals I enjoy writing in. Another question in my one room in a nursing home what would I really like to see. My kids stopped taking anything that I tried to give them.

We are downsizing and not sure about large pictures on our walls. Any suggestions on storing the photos without the frames. I see photo boxes for different size pictures. When we get to our new destination we could revisit this. All other photos will be in photo books for display.

As my family's historian (I'm 38 years old), I implore those of you looking to downsize - if you're decluttering OLD family photos because they don't mean anything to you personally, PLEASE either find out if someone in your extended family would like to have them, or donate them to your local historical society (or whatever location the photos came from). It's distressing to me to watch people throw out old photos after scanning them or *shudders* snapping a photo of them, because if done incorrectly, those digital photos will not last the way the real ones would, and those real photos may have clues on the borders and versos that would help someone identify them, and if they're tossed, well then there goes that. So when scanning, think like an archivist. And I can't tell you how many times I've been so excited to read a postcard, a letter, a diary, or pages and pages of memoirs written by ancestors who I never knew personally, but who were brought to life through their words. So just bear in mind that even if it means nothing to you, it could mean the world to someone in your family who is interested in learning more about the everyday lives of their ancestors.

Do you think it's good to keep photos that only bring you joy, some stuff from my childhood has bad memories and I almost don't want to keep them, also I have pictures of my marriage with my ex husband but my sons in some, I'm unsure of what to do with these

Do you recommend a photo scanner?

Did the tapes and letters go? If so, what was the reasoning to chuck rather than keep?

Kingdom?

I don’t box things up for my kids to look through. I snap a pic on my phone and send them a pic, they answer with a 👎 or 👍 on each pic. It makes the decluttering process go so much faster for all of us. What they do t want either gets donated or thrown away.

Omg I have my hand print in plaster, I was 5 currently 52😳

I am a saver. Regarding greeting cards. Tear the fronts off and use as post cards. Just save the handwriting. Tear off the front covers ( no writing on the back) and send to st Jude’s hospital. Children use them for,crafts. Or see if local daycare might want them. Throwing useful items away makes me I’ll.

👍🤓👍

What did your client do with all the photos and scans of memorabilia?

Wow I have 5 BOXES. I need to re-review.

Please increase the audio!

Would have listened longer if the audio was improved.

Great advice. Please buy a microphone.

I can't hear it... perhaps buy a MICROPHONE!

Every time my mother-in-law visited us, she brought things for us that she no longer needed. That was horror. I won't do this to my children. It's our responsibility to let things go, we can't just force it on someone else.

Noooo You can’t toss the footprints!! A photo will never do them justice!!