Organizing & Preserving Your Memorabilia

Whether decluttering, spring cleaning, downsizing, or simply refreshing your space, there is typically one category of items in your home that won’t be hitting the road any time soon. Memorabilia! Now, often when people hear this word they think “collectors” and believe they’re safe from this clutter creator. This isn’t the case! You don’t have to be a collector of something to have accumulated cherished memorabilia in your home. Even the most minimalistic people likely have photographs, ticket stubs, concert tees, old letters or greeting cards from loved ones, etc. that they’re holding on to. The question remains: if the associated memories are enough to make me want to keep these items…what do I do with them? How do I best organize them? How can I ensure they’re still around for use or admiration many years from now when I may want them? And we can help answer those questions!

You first need to decide how much space you truly have for memorabilia. While you’d never want to part with the truly significant items, you likely have an abundance and can purge at least some items. Knowing how much space you have for those items you’re keeping will help you better gauge how much is necessary to purge. Decide how much space you have and how you’d like to preserve these memories. Do you want them digitized into a USB? Maybe made into a photo album? Simply stored in a cloud on your computer? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you plan.

For anything you’ll be physically keeping and storing, make sure you research the best way to preserve these items. For example, storing a wedding dress for years is likely pointless unless you have a dry cleaner preserve it to keep it safe. If you have photographs you want to keep, be sure they’re in storage containers that will keep moisture out. Autographed pictures, records, or tickets? You want to ensure they’re protected behind UV glass and that the item is matted so the ink of the signature isn’t directly against the glass of the frame. Many items come with specific preservation requirements! It’s important to research them so you know what you need to budget for and purchase toward the end of the project.

For your memorabilia items, you want to first sort by type of item because then you’ll need to sort into subcategories when organizing. And involve family members if you’re able! This can be a fun time to look back on memories, but they can also help you decide what’s worth keeping and/or what should be let go of or passed on to one of them.

While sorting items, purge any photos, negatives, or kids’ artwork you no longer need. Items such as blurry photos, images of old acquaintances or friends you only knew for a short period of time, coloring book pages with only a few crayon marks, etc. are likely not worth the space they’ll take up if held on to. When sorting photos (the most common and abundant memorabilia) you will want to sort into categories. Try sorting by family member, event, age/year, importance, etc.

Find a categorization system that works best for you and use this time to be selective on what memories are most important to keep! You also may find items that can be repurposed or passed along to someone. For example, an old photo may be used to create an ornament or saved and given as a sentimental gift during the holidays.

Digitizing photos is a great way to hold on to your memories without having to take up a ton of space to store them. By digitizing your photos/artwork or having these items made into a photo album, you’ll have great long-term preservation for future generations to also enjoy and look back on. For photos specifically, there are many companies that make the digitization process quick and easy, but I mentioned a few favorites in this blog post on how to organize keepsakes.

Some digitizing is easy enough to do at home: scan letters, documents, and/or photos onto your computer and store in a cloud platform, hard drive, or USB device. There are also trusted companies that can help you do this if you have a huge number of items or find the process too overwhelming. The following companies are all great for digitizing family photos, kids’ artwork, and home videos:

• EverPresent
• Artkive (especially good for households with little artists!)
• Southtree
• Legacy Box (specializes in older tapes and cassettes)

Companies such as the above are specialized professionals that can assist you with some of the trickier items. For example, Legacy Box can digitize anything from a Betamax to Super 8 film reel! Digitizing will not only help preserve these items and memories, but also make it much easier for family members, friends, or yourself to access them at a moment’s notice in the future.

A simple way to preserve documents and images is to purchase archival boxes. They are durable and best suited for long-term preservation of these items. Many are acid-free and will help protect your memorabilia from damage that can be caused by light, moisture, or insects and pests. Make sure to label your archival boxes so you know what items are in each and to make it easier to locate items if/when needed.

Organize your memorabilia in a way that makes the most sense to YOU and the area that you have to store these items. You might consider setting up and arranging by family member, the year, or by event. Once set up and organized, you need to store these items in a space that is easy to access to encourage maintainability.

The best thing you can do for your memorabilia is stay consistent with your system. Designate a certain time each month or year to update your items and keep that up as years pass. If you aren’t consistently maintaining your memorabilia, you risk losing items. You also don’t want to risk getting your memorabilia built back up to a state that seems cluttered, overwhelming, or unmanageable. By having a place for everything and designating a reoccurring time to tend to and update these items you should have no problem keeping these preserved memories enjoyable for years to come.

Memorabilia is often the only truly priceless items within your home. If these items aren’t properly cared for, organized, and preserved you may very realistically never be able to recover them. If you aren’t willing to take that risk but know a professional could help you get this task done quicker and more efficiently, please reach out at info@sortedout.com. We’d be happy to set up a meeting and begin the process of making these memories truly last a lifetime.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Tonia