Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
Distilled
For some people, letting go and throwing things away is easy, but for most people, even people with good systems, it isn’t something that you do once and move on. Organizing is an ongoing process. It’s more obvious—and more cut-and-dried—when it comes to say, tax files, but for things like keepsakes it can seem more complicated.
Recently I was with a client who had a good system for storing mementos. The system was working, but she had run out of space. We found ourselves having to re-organize what was already organized because it had become too much.
The task isn’t really purging so much as distilling. After all, what you want is not a comprehensive archive (at least I hope not) but a rich, memory-filled capsule, that will be fun to look at, not an overwhelming rat’s nest.
Sifting through, with the lens of time, it’s easier to eliminate the store-bought cards that are signed but not personal, most of the art, all of the worksheets—things that seemed so cute when school was new and exciting.
This is where the “boundaries” concept from my book comes into play. If you’ve decided that you have this size box, and this size art portfolio and that is all the room you are going to devote to your child’s keepsakes, great! You’ll add to it, a few times a year probably, and when it gets full, instead of hopping on the Internet and ordering another box, you sit down and spend a few minutes winnowing.
The thing is, organizing is like making a good broth, or scotch. Sure, you can do it in a day (at least broth), but the longer you keep at it, the better the end product is. Maybe you should have thrown out more in the first place (you will in the future!) but as even as you purge, enjoy the walk down memory lane. In the end, your memento box will be better curated and more user-friendly because you spent that time to distill it down to its most important elements.