Use This Storytelling Technique To Organize Sentimental Items

Use this storytelling technique to declutter and organize your most sentimental items

This post will be short and sweet. I want to follow up on my last post Organizing the Basement. As I mentioned in that post, a sound easy way to sort your belongings is to divide them into quadrants or corners in the basement by Toss, Donate, Sell or Keep. Sorting your things into these four areas first gets the “Weeding Process” started off in the right direction. Use this Storytelling technique to declutter and organize your most sentimental items. Here is a great article in the Huffington Post on the importance of storytelling for future generations. This is what the article says about how important storytelling is:

“From a legacy perspective, we tell our stories for ourselves and as a gift to future generations. How does telling our stories to benefit us? We need to know and express our own stories. Difficulties arise not because we have a story, perhaps a very sad or painful story, but because we become attached to our stories and make them an essential part of our very selves.

Telling our stories is not an end in itself, but an attempt to release ourselves from them, to evolve and grow beyond them. We tell our stories to transform ourselves; to learn about our history and tell our experiences to transcend them; to use our stories to make a difference in our world; to broaden our perspective to see further than normal; to act beyond a story that may have imprisoned or enslaved us; to live more of our spiritual and earthly potential.”

Use this storytelling technique to declutter and organize your most sentimental items to tell your story…

Now the next step involves tossing and donating things as soon as possible. I consider this a “must”. If you wait too long, you may end up keeping these unwanted items. The more time folks spent waiting to toss or donate things gives them more time to go back and move them to the Keep area, which is very self-defeating when you think about it.

Now about Keeping things. What do you do with these things? For me it is simple.

1. You either decide what is truly valuable, have it appraised, or find research that proves it is worth money.
2. The next question is will you use the item.
3. If you have items of little value yet have tremendous sentimental value in the Keep pile, tell a story about it and donate or give it away.

What do I mean by Storytelling? And how do we use this storytelling technique to declutter and organize your most sentimental items?

Move all of the items from the Keep pile/area and decide what you will use on a regular basis and what you will not. From the What You Will Not Use pile, decide what is sentimental enough to snap a picture of.  Then journal or write a short story about it in a special journal or scrapbook. See my post here about using a journal to organize your home. Your story can be a simple handwritten journal with pictures inserted in them or a digital journal that you have developed by a professional photo-developing company. I have tons of digital pictures of our vacations and valuables. I pick the most sentimental ones and have digital photo books made of them. Another idea is to have a digital photo frame made of these sentimental items. That is my plan. My husband and I have always wanted a photo frame that acts as a slide show of our favorite pics of all time…..

Use this storytelling technique to declutter and organize your most sentimental items

This Storytelling Journal/Album/Photo frame can be a wonderful keepsake that the entire family will absolutely love. I think that I may put mine on the coffee table as a conversation piece. It feels good to be able to keep your invaluable sentimental items alive and visible.  And you are reducing the clutter around your home as well. Now, these items will give you joy and inspiration as you are actually “using” them each time you read your Storytelling Journal or view your photos in a book or slide show. Share your thoughts in the discussion below. Please post if you are thinking of starting your own family story.

See you soon…