Memories

Our last house had a huge wall of built-in bookcases in the family room, thanks to the previous owner’s record collecting habit. That gave us the freedom to display a bunch of things in a way that didn’t overwhelm the living space.

Over the years we’ve accumulated a lot of such items. Souvenirs, knick-knacks, tchotchkes: the words we use to talk about them are all a little bit denigrating.

Now we have a smaller version of the same shelving setup, so choices have to be made. We laid everything out and sorted into three piles: display, store, and donate. I suppose the full Kondo approach would have been even more severe, but we have storage space and years of retirement stretching ahead of us. The more draconian cull will come later in life.

A few boxes of our stuff made it to the Salvation Army. And seeing our things there offers perspective: the memories may be priceless and unique and helped shape us into who are we today, but the souvenir wineglass is $2.