Keepsakes are clutter

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There’s a fun game that young people like to play with old folks called I Want That Thing When You Die. My older sister and I were putting in a round of IWTTWYD at my grandparents’ house one evening when we were kids, and I decided to lay claim to a silver spider. This thing was perched far above my head on the corner of their China cabinet and I thought it was a beautiful, fancy object, but also a bit weird. So I called dibs on it before Jess could. My grandma immediately got up to retrieve it: “You can have it now.”

Turns out what I thought was a priceless art piece was just a cheap plastic ball with pipe cleaner legs. I have no idea if I even took it home. But even if it had been a vintage Dansk sculpture, it turns out I don’t have the keepsake gene: I do not wish to be burdened by physical memories. And in the case of passed-down heirlooms, I always wonder if the item even held any meaning to the person who owned it, or if we’ve chosen to douse it in significance ourselves. I mean, Grandma was clearly trying to offload that spider.

My friend Lacy texted me after she moved recently, bemoaning the boxes of mementos she’s lugged to yet another rental (“I’m trying to aggressively DOGE my belongings.” Lol imagine Musk’s 20-year-olds forcing themselves into her home only to toss out the cookware she actually uses.). But I get that feeling! I did an awful lot of purging during my own move last year, just because I didn’t want to pack one more thing. If the only purpose an object serves is “a reminder,” it’s as good as worthless to me.

There are plenty of articles and op-eds out there that explore why many people don’t want to inherit their parents’ or grandparents’ things, often related to how little room many of us have — and how even fewer of us actually own those spaces. But I also don’t understand it on an emotional level. I hate useless things — unless it’s extremely cool like a seashell that has a small pearl-shaped light inside.

When I think of people who are professional heirloom-havers, I think of my pals Jamie and Mike. They have a great many things that once belonged to people they love — which I find overwhelming. They own items that simply exist in their home, and it doesn’t seem to stress them out?? So I asked Jamie: What makes you want to hang onto things?

She’s also the perfect person to ask because of her occupation: Jamie’s a librarian at the University of Chicago, and teaches classes in special collections. 

“I always start my archival classes by asking students to look at the mystery objects before them,” she says. “I have them investigate the material nature of the physical thing and tell me everything that they can about what they observe without giving them any context for why the materials are there or where they came from.” 

She then shares the actual story of what the object is, where it came from, and what they can speculate from it. “New meaning can be gleaned from physical objects when you can re-see them in terms of who had it, used it, made it.”

Jamie says that in nearly every class, a student will ask a question about how we know what we should keep ourselves. She tells them about a fragment of papyrus the school has in its archives from (they believe) the first century, which contains 18 lines, in Greek, of Homer’s Iliad — likely just a teen’s homework (life has been unfair for eons!). She asks them to imagine their own trash being saved between pieces of glass for future students, who would likely marvel at the idea that something so trivial could last for thousands of years, and derive meaning from it. 

Jamie wasn’t always a trained librarian, but she has always been a collector. Spending much of her time with her grandparents in Kansas — where she lived — and in England, Jamie grew up with their stories about dust bowls, wars, family secrets, recipes, and so on. 

“Many of these tales also came with a prop: a crochet hook that made all of the family’s winter scarves; the cake topper that was the only ‘not borrowed’ item for a wedding; the glass bowl that held the lard that was spread in a thin layer over bread when times were tough and stomachs were empty,” she says. “These stories were important to me because they gave me something I didn’t possess as an adopted child: They gave me a rooted sense of belonging.”

^The idea of lugging around keepsakes makes me feel like the Junk Lady from the Labyrinth.

She described items in her home that she could see around her: a mantle clock that belonged to her grandparents, which she carted home on her lap from England; a quilt made by her aunt with fragments of fabric from two generations of her biological maternal family, many of whom she never got to meet; candlesticks from her grandparents’ first post-retirement vacation.

“They keep me tethered to my own history — a complicated mess in and of itself — and help me understand the complicated fabric of the world around me,” she says. “Maybe one day these objects will help somebody else understand their own place in the human continuum. And maybe they won't. I suppose I’m not really concerned about that.”

The idea of keeping memories alive through objects is not an unsurprising one. And it turns out that people may choose to hang onto mementos from their own past for a similar reason: They want to reconnect with someone they’re at risk of forgetting. Jerry M. Burger, a Santa Clara University psychologist, interviewed hundreds of people for his 2011 book, Returning Home: Reconnecting With Our Childhoods. A third of the folks he interviewed had revisited their childhood homes, while another third planned to. According to an Atlantic interview with Burger, these people all shared the same motivation, regardless of how positive or negative their childhood was: They felt like a stranger to their old selves and wanted to reconnect.

My mom actually just mailed me a copy of my fourth grade softball photo. I don’t remember what made me tick at that age or how I’d go about reconnecting with her, but that’s fine with me. I don’t feel like some part of me is lost because I forget the thrill of making beaded lizards or how relatable I thought the hit song “Bitch” by Meredith Brooks was (I was 10. It was probably my anthem.).

This is not the first time my mom has mailed some of my childhood mementos to me. She’s started occasionally including some of my grade school art in cards that she sends. It is very clear that she’s making me throw away the things she feels too guilty to toss herself! She’s just passing the buck and I always chuck this stuff in the trash immediately. The sentimental part of my brain was overridden by learning all the lyrics to 1997’s No. 15 Billboard Hot 100 single “Bitch” by Meredith Brooks!!!

The Atlantic article also quoted Marya Schechtman, a philosopher at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who said people actively try to make their pasts and futures real. By that token, it would make sense that physical items would feel the most “real.” This squares with how Jamie describes how she uses these objects and their stories to make sense of a complicated world.

I know that I’m probably an outlier in that my brain doesn’t quite work this way. I do have a folder of items I’ve kept from the landfill, like a few tickets from the first concerts I attended, my early newspaper and magazine clips, and at least one funeral card. But by and large, I don’t hold on to stuff. There’s no shoebox of dried corsages or love letters from exes (not a problem if you only date the functionally illiterate). Just because I don’t have the tassel from my high school graduation gown doesn’t mean I didn’t get my diploma (wherever that is now — probably in a forthcoming card from mother).

I don’t fault anyone for wanting their keepsakes, and it was always very fascinating to me that there would be a tactile component when Jamie would tell me about her family — I like a multimedia exhibit! When I was visiting my folks in May, my mom gave me a bracelet that belonged to my aunt, who passed away suddenly two years ago. Mom also gave me one of her own bracelets that no longer fits her. I’ve worn both multiple times now and really like them. I don’t think they’re worth much, but they look cool and, yeah — I do think of my aunt or mom when I wear them. As far as what qualifies as a “good” memento, I think this would fit the bill for me. Otherwise, keepsakes just feel like clutter in my home.

While we’re on the topic, I do need to state this: I am claiming dibs on my parents’ blue tulip wine glasses. I know my sisters want them but this is a public forum, which means something in the court of law. I may not hold onto memories but you can bet your ass I’ll hold a grudge.