143 - How can I declutter when I'm sentimental about everything?

Summary

Two clients, one week, the same sentence. "I'm worried because I'm sentimental about everything." It's a phrase Heather hears often, and one that quietly convinces people they're worse at decluttering than everyone else.

In this episode, Heather breaks sentimentality down into four levels, most of what feels precious isn't actually equal, and talks through how neurodivergence can shape emotional attachment to belongings. She shares the story of a bag of trip souvenirs that taught her the difference between a true memory and something that just happened to be sitting next to one through osmosis. She also makes the case for why being sentimental, far from being a disadvantage, is a skill worth developing rather than a flaw to fix.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why sentimentality isn't a weakness, and why it's simply a natural part of being human
• How neurodivergence can shape emotional attachment to belongings
• The four levels of sentimentality, from long-time possessions to pure sentimental items, and the "osmosis" attachment in between
• The difference between fondness and true sentimental attachment
• How grouping souvenirs and keepsakes together makes them all feel equally important, and how to break that grouping apart
• The question to ask yourself about any item, would this matter if it was the only memory you had left
• Why non-sentimental, disposable living leads to more clutter and more cost over time, not less
• Why caring for your possessions and feeling attached to them is a skill worth developing, not a disadvantage

Mentioned in this episode:

• DeclutterCon, Heather's upcoming event for practical tips, reframes and connections to move forward decluttering and community support

Transcript

heather (00:00)
Hello, Untanglers, and welcome back to another episode of Decluttering Untangled with me, your host, Heather Tingle. So this week, I had two clients, two totally separate sessions, both of them said almost the exact same thing as someone in my community group said. They were worried about decluttering because they were sentimental about everything. I'm like, you are people close to my heart. This is me. Do not worry. But it made me really sad because

What they were really saying without realising it was that being sentimental, being what some people call over sensitive, was a bad thing. Like it made them worse at declaring and organising than somebody else would be. And that's not the case. It's really not. So today I want to talk to you a little bit about how you can actually find your levels of sentimentality because they're all equal.

And then I'll talk you through about how being sentimental can actually be a really good thing and give you bit of a mindset shift with that for you to move forward. And hopefully it will make decluttering a bit easier for you. So if you are in my world, you probably know already that I don't do the whole neurodivergence is my superpower stuff. Like I think it just gives you, it's a different neuro type, a different perspective. Some things are harder, some things are easier. It's just difference, isn't it?

So in my experience, having a neurodivergent brain does seem to make you prone to being extra sentimental about things. And obviously, you know, I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist, whatever, like this is just my own personal opinion. But I think it's because our executive functioning is a bit, I want to use the word wappy, I don't know if anyone else is gonna understand this word. It's a bit weird. And we struggle to prioritise something because it's hard to prioritise and it's hard to name feelings. And also we tend to have like a project or collection mindset rather than seeing things as like standalone objects. So of course decluttering is going to be harder for us. Of course it is. Like that makes sense. But one of the reasons it made me really sad when I was talking to these people was that they were assuming that decluttering anything was going to be impossible. Now I've decluttered my entire home probably about I don't know, 80 % of my stuff, 90 % of my stuff. And I am the most sentimental person going. So do not assume automatically the decisions are going to be hard in advance. You're predicting the future and you're not very good at it. So you honestly never know if you plan it well enough following my system. It shouldn't be scary. It shouldn't be overwhelming. So you shouldn't be worried about what the outcome is going to be before you've even started. Like, who am I kidding? Like asking you not to worry.

like that'd even work on me, not. But it is putting a big overwhelming barrier in place before you've even started. So limit it if you can. So instead of thinking about how much you're going to fail at getting rid of stuff, think of it in a different way, because let's work with your sentimentality. Think of it as assessing your favorites instead. And that can feel so much more positive, much easier to do. Like if you asked me to pick my favorites, it's so much easier, well, within reason, like.

Pick a favourite spoon, easy. Pick a favourite colour or record, like music-wise. I'll be there all day. But when it comes to my things, when I've got a specific category, bite-sized category in front of me, can I pick my favourites out? Yeah, absolutely I can. Doesn't necessarily mean like in order of top one and then two and then three, but can I pick the top five? Yeah, I can. So look at it as picking favourites rather than having to get rid of stuff. So that can help.

But also it's important to realize that sentimentality is not one like flat thing. It's not like one level. There's different levels to it. And once you can name them, everything gets a lot easier. So level one, or like the first level, is sentimental just because you've had it a long time. There's no memory attached to it as a specific item. It's just that it's always been there.

So I hear this all the time, it's just always been there. Like it's always been in that drawer or, I've just moved it from house to house. I've just remember it's always been there. I don't know where I got it from. I don't even know how I got it. It's just always there. It can also be that it's old in like a historical sense. So, you know, it's a hundred years old or it's 50 years old or apparently because the 1980s weren't that long ago, you know, like in my head, you know, it's 40 or 50 years old. it might be just be old.

That doesn't necessarily mean that it's important to you because it may be something that you've got no interest in, but it's just always been in that drawer or it might be that you've got it and it's just a really old thing. And that might be your like first level sentimental. The next level, I'll kind of come back to this one properly in a minute because I've got a better explanation than me rabbiting on is the stuff your brain confuses.

with sentimental stuff. So it's not actually sentimental in its own right, but it kind of gets swept up in the feeling anyway by like osmosis because it's attached to sentimental things. So science people, I'm really sorry. I know I've probably used the wrong word with osmosis, but it kind of makes sense in my head. And then the top level of sentimentally is what I call pure sentimental. So it's linked to a person, it's linked to a memory. It's really important to you. It's the stuff that you would put in a memory box.

And when you're old, you will go through it and it will make you happy. It's like the story of your life, of what was important, who was important and the things that you experienced. That's the stuff that you leave till last. Okay. So there are these different levels of like sentimentality and then you've kind of got the sentimental but not totally pure. like pure stuff is the stuff that's your memory box stuff.

I don't know, wedding rings, wedding dress. If we're going clothes, it's probably say clothes. So like wedding dresses, your prom dress, your 18th birthday suit or whatever. A top that you felt amazing in when you went to your first date or dance or whatever.

They are pure sentimental. And then you've got other things that feel sentimental because you are fond of them. I hope that makes sense. Okay. So they're the like different levels. It's kind of like four levels there. And I think being able to realize what each level is and how important it ranks for you is really useful. And then I want to give you like a practical explanation of the kind of osmosis one. The stuff that's not really sentimental, but it's attached to. So.

I'm sure I've talked about my trips abroad before, like a trip to Paris. When I was going through my travel souvenir stuff, I had a plastic carrier bag full of things. So postcards, receipts, ticket stores, like that kind of thing. And there was a plain receipt from an old till. So like no cafe name on it, just a really faded price where you could barely read it for probably like a phantom of a And like a plain stripey paper carrier bag that...

It came in like with a postcard. The kind of stuff that you could get from any corner shop anywhere, like it wasn't Parisian. I could have got it from, you know, a cash and carry or my local corner shop if I bought a bag of sweets. That. So the thing my brain did was it grouped it all together. That receipt and that stripey paper bag felt just as sentimental to me.

as the photos of me and my mum on the hotel balcony. Like that would be pure sentimental. Like the one with the flashing Eiffel Tower lights behind us and we were dead pleased because we'd got like a view of the Eiffel Tower from our room, which was tiny. Like that was, in my head, that's now like pure sentimental. But at time, like that was as important as the Fanta Limon receipt. It was just as important as the ticket stubs from the places we went. It was just as important as the carrier bag.

from probably duty-free, I think it was, something like that. Like all that was all the same level of sentimentality. And that's what my brain wanted to do. It wanted to just group it all together. This is Paris stuff. Paris stuff is important. This is all sentimental. I wanna see it as one collection, one whole thing that represented the trip. But when it actually went through each bit on its own, it became so much easier to see what was the most sentimental and what mattered less.

Like, did I really need to keep a receipt for a can of pop or like a can of soda if you're outside the UK? Would it have felt as important if it was by itself? Maybe. If it was the only thing I had from that trip, so I had no photos, I had no memory of it, I had no memory of anything else from Paris, maybe that would have been the thing that I kept and that was absolutely sentimental. But when I've got a whole carrier bag of stuff that was probably like from only...

three or four days away out of my entire life. No, it didn't need to be there, it could go. So if you take one thing away from this episode, hopefully you'd take a few things, but I want you to ask yourself that question. Would this matter to me, it was the only thing left, but is it the only thing left? Have I got other things that are more sentimental to me for that memory or that place or that person? Or is it only sentimental?

because it's sitting next to, in the bag or the box or the drawer or the collection of other things of which some of those are pure sentimental. Hopefully that makes sense. So if you've been looking at a pile of things thinking, I can't tell what's actually precious and what just came along for the ride, like you're not failing at decluttering. That's just your brain doing what brains do, keeping us safe, trying to keep everything together.

grouping things together as a whole story rather than actually looking at them as individual things and that's what we need to do. You are allowed to pull the phantom limon receipt, apologies if I'm playing this really badly, out of that whole box or bag. You can let it go without letting go of the memory. Like the memory's still there in your brain, hopefully. You still had the trip, the photo on the balcony will still mean what it always meant. Like there might be a ticket stub that you keep to prove that you went. Like that would be kept.

So when you find your levels, you will find it easier to let go because you can let go of the lower associated levels. Hope that makes sense. Now for the positive side, because I don't want anybody thinking sentimentality is a negative trait. It is not. It might make declaring a bit harder. Yes. But you are sifting through and prioritising your memories and that is hard. It is meant to be. We are humans. We have feelings.

We care. How is that ever bad? It's not. So if you are not sentimental, it is also problematic. So everyone thinks that being utterly sentimental is really hard, exhausting work where it's making life really difficult for ourselves. If you are not sentimental about anything, it does not mean that life is easier. What tends to happen is everything becomes easy come, easy go.

It costs you so much more. It can be just as exhausting because you never get that feeling of comfort and settle. You're always striving for something else because you're not able to decide what's important. Things get chucked out. You do a mass binge. You get rid. You shove stuff on vintage. You put it on Facebook marketplace. Things go. You get the buzz of replacing them with all brand new. And then you throw them out again six months later and you start all over again.

Do you really think that that's easier? You can probably think of someone like that already. Always changing their things, always changing their clothes, changing their home, always changing decorations, like always selling and giving away a loss and then buying again. If you're sentimental about things, it doesn't tend to happen the same way. Once you've decluttered properly, you take better care of what you keep. You really look after it. You really cherish it.

It lasts longer because it's protected and you care and you notice sooner when something actually needs replacing and it can become sad to replace, but it's a gradual process that feels good when it happens because you're looking out for the right things to replace it, not just getting anything in to fill that void that you're feeling. In my eyes, it also means that you have got a lot of empathy for things and for people and that is no bad thing at all.

So before you tell yourself you're at massive disadvantage for being sentimental about everything, maybe try looking at a bit of a reframe instead. You're not too sentimental. You just haven't sorted your levels of sentimentality out yet and you care about things and that is never a bad thing. I hope that helps. So this kind of stuff along with like practical decluttering tips and advice I will be talking about at DeclutterCon.

This is going to be my annual event. The first one is coming up in October and it is going to be genuinely epic. I cannot wait. I would love for as many of my untangled community to be there as possible so I can meet you in real life. And for those who do hugs, I can do hugs and we can have a good chat about homes and we can get you on the right track. We can get you ready so you know your next steps that are right for you. And you can get so much information that you need to do what you need to do. So

Please do check that out. Details will be in the show notes. Okay, I hope that has helped. Until next time, remember you're not alone. Be kind to yourself and keep untangling.