When it comes to your possessions, what are the items you own that mean the most to you? All of us have things that are important to us. Some might have attachments to clothes or books, and others love to hold on to their kids’ crafts or a collection of trinkets from travel. What we value most can vary from person to person, but we all have our treasures. This is why Treasure Reverence—what House Peace calls the process of discerning what is meaningful to you and honoring that—is so important. Do you love your collection of books? Get a fun bookshelf so you can display your collection in a beautiful way. If your clothes are what matter, invest in good storage so you don’t bury and lose pieces that you love. Make a plan for the things that have meaning and are special to you, and get rid of the things that don’t hold significance in your life.
When it comes to decluttering, the temptation to throw out everything with reckless abandon often arises, especially when you realize just how much stuff you have. But that doesn’t mean you have to become a minimalist! Taking the extra time to name what matters to you instead can help you make a better plan for how to sort through your things and make space on the shelf for what you treasure most.
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When my eldest (now 13) began preschool, we entered the “bringing papers home from school” phase of parenting. Every scribble was put in her backpack and then carefully placed by her on my kitchen counter. One day, she saw me not-so-sneakily toss the pile of papers in the recycle bin and she, horrified, cried that all of those papers were special and shouldn’t be thrown away. My response to her was: “If everything is special, then nothing is special.” I explained to her that I do look at the papers she brings home, and if there are ones that I believe are truly special, I hang onto them. The rest get tossed. I simply didn’t have enough space (or desire) to hold onto every little project she made at school. Now that we’re four kids deep and live in a smaller home, there’s absolutely no world in which I could keep all of the papers my kids bring home from school on a daily basis. I still look through all of them and hang onto the ones that I find special (writing their name in a new way, a handprint, a silly picture they drew or phrase they wrote that I want to remember), but most of them wind up in the recycling bin. The first time one of my sons brought home a 100% on a test, he asked if we could hang it on the fridge for a while because he was proud of it. We did, and then when it was no longer exciting, it ended up in the bin, too. I was once called “heartless” by someone who learned that I throw away most of their schoolwork (and all their baby teeth), but the reality is I’m quite sentimental—I just know what I find valuable enough to hang onto and what I don’t, and I’m not going to waste time and space on saving things that don’t matter a lot to me.
There’s a misconception that all home organizers are minimalists and that we don’t support people having “stuff.” The truth is you might be surprised to see that in our homes there are things like rock collections, full bookshelves, full closets, and bins of sentimental items from our children. We have simply decided that these things hold value to us, and we’d like to hang onto them while letting go of the things that don’t. I don’t keep baby teeth because I think it’s kind of icky, but I do keep a few favorite articles of clothing from different baby and toddler sizes of my children because they hold incredible memories for me. The teeth take up far less room and, from an organizational perspective, are much easier to deal with, but they hold no meaning to me. The handful of baby clothes I’ve kept have been carefully stored in the attic.
After discerning what is a treasure to you, the next and equally important step in treasure reverence is to honor those items by displaying or storing them properly. It is a waste and, frankly, very sad when someone discovers something meaningful to them that has been ruined due to improper storage. Depending on what your treasure is, there might be a very specific way that it should be kept while not in use, or it’s possible that your treasure would be best honored on display. My sister has hung onto a few items from our late grandparents, such as their mantel clock and wedding picture, and she likes to keep them on display in her home versus putting them in a box in the attic so she can look at them regularly and enjoy them.
If you have a collection, is there a way that your collection can be on display? If you love cookbooks, is there an open shelf in your kitchen where you can see and access them easily? Displaying your treasures is such a beautiful way to honor them. Clothing being hung properly is a simple, everyday example of treasure reverence. One of our favorite things to do on an organizing job is help people unearth and honor their treasures by clearing out items that have no meaning and helping them honor those items.