How to handle sentimental clutter before moving

Moving is one of those events that make you rethink your entire life. You realize just how many items you actually own, and you frequently find yourself lost in memories. There is a good chance that you still keep your kids` toys or clothes from when they were babies or your grandmother`s china that she gave you as a gift ten years ago. Dealing with clutter is already hard enough, but when you want to handle sentimental clutter you know that this is an entirely different level. Although long-distance movers Florida will help you move everything you want, it is still better if you leave something behind.

handle sentimental clutter by reusing it in your daily life. five vases on a shelf and one contains flowers
Handle sentimental clutter by deciding to reuse it in your daily life.

When you want to handle sentimental clutter the most important thing is to start

When you think about what you need to do, you have a desire to procrastinate. This is completely normal and expected. So, mark the days in your calendar when you want to handle sentimental clutter and stick to the plan. Include the handling of sentimental clutter in your ultimate moving checklist. If you think it will last for more than one day, plan to dedicate up to three hours each day for this. The hardest thing is to begin, after that, it gets much easier. Instead of feeling guilt and pressure, you will feel liberated and relieved.

Sort out the clutter

Not all clutter is the same, which you will find after you start to handle sentimental clutter. If you have boxes of sentimental clutter just collecting dust in your basement or cellar, you need to deal with it as soon as possible. On the other hand, you might want to decide that you will take some of the items with you. This is not wrong or in vain. There is no reason why you should not keep at least some of the sentimental clutter, just as long as it does not burden you.

Reuse the sentimental clutter

If you do not want to get rid of some things, always ask yourself whether you can reuse it. When you have a lot of sentimental clutter that is just forgotten in some corner, you might as well throw it away. It will just cost you money to move it to your new home where it will just be forgotten again in a matter of days. It is also always an option to reduce, reuse, and recycle in order to go green with sentimental clutter.

Think if there is a way of reusing the sentimental clutter so that you can include it in your everyday life. That grandmother`s china we mentioned before? If it is not too antique, maybe you can use it on a daily basis? Or if you have clothes that you cannot possibly wear now, you can have it made into a quilt which you can cover yourself at night. Refurbish the old coffee table into some modern color and let it be the highlight of your living room.

a box of sentimental clutter, cards, necklaces, bags, etc.
Choose only one thing to keep out of many, and place it in a box labeled `sentimental clutter`.

Keep one item out of many

One excellent way to handle sentimental clutter is to decide to keep one item out of many. Usually, we have a group of items that are either gifts or memorabilia of a person, event, a specific time in the past. And you will this start seeing this patter the moment you start decluttering. If it is too hard to get rid of every single item, decide to keep just one from each group. For example

  • One photo from high school, one photo from your birthday parties, etc.
  • One movie ticket to represent all the events you`ve been to
  • One seashell that you brought home from the seaside.

Then, use a small-sized box, or a medium-sized box and place the items there. Label the box as sentimental clutter, and who knows at the end of the day, you may decide to let go of that box as well.

Store your sentimental clutter

This is a very useful way in which you can handle sentimental clutter. Sometimes you just do not have enough time to deal with sentiments. If you are moving on short notice, and you are not sure what to throw away or donate, just store the items. They will be well-protected at Miami storage facilities, there is no doubt there. And later, when you have enough time to carefully go through the sentimental clutter, you can decide what should you do with it.

Go digital

Countless albums of photos take up a lot of your space and choosing just one photo can be really hard. However, you can easily turn thousands of photos into a virtual photo album that you can store on your laptop. Also, you can take photos of items that you need to throw away, and still have something to remember the happy days by. Sentimental clutter is not the only way to feel at home in your new apartment.

Or, you can scan the books that you received as a gift and keep them on your laptop. Remember that we take our memories with us everywhere we go, we do not need to have a physical item reminding us of a past event. Do not be afraid to turn your memorabilia into digital media as it has a lot of memories.

three photo albums in a dark room
Old photo albums will just lay in some box all the time, instead go digital and look at the photos any time you want.

Donate or throw away

If possible, donate the sentimental clutter that you own to charities or libraries. Make the most of the way you handle sentimental clutter. On the other hand, if you cannot donate it, throw it away. Birthday cards, airplane tickets, and other items just remind you of your past life, but the time has come to make room for the future. Throw away your sentimental clutter and never look back. You will feel as if some burden has been taken off of your chest, at least according to Feng Shui experts. Good luck!