Sorting through the Memories

I’m not someone who collects a lot of stuff.  But we do have a few collections of things from vacations and special occasions that need to be trimmed down. Our new home is less than half the size of this one and I simply have nowhere to display these items anymore. Looking at my curio cabinet full of local treasures from trips to Alaska, South Dakota, Hawaii, the Outer Banks, etc; I am remembering the stores and galleries where we found each treasure.

Keeping my new motto in mind (SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY) I pushed on and worked on reducing the collection by half.  After consulting with Chad (these are his memories too) we came up with what I think is a nice representation of our travels. I was even able to keep a wooden display table with shelves that Chad made to put them on and it looks great in the new place.  That is the ONLY piece of furniture we have in the new house that is there to display things and it is now full!  From now on when we travel we will have our memories and some pictures.  We don’t need to bring home “stuff”.

Years ago we started collecting shot glasses from our trips.  We never use them all and they are on a shelf on the kitchen where you can’t see them anyway.  We decided we couldn’t see ourselves needing more than 6 in the future.  If the party is that big we are taking it to a bar anyway!!  So we laid them all out and Chad and I took turns choosing. There were some that I was sad to let go.  What about the 4 souvenir shot glasses I had to wash in the bathroom sink from House of Blues in Chicago.  Well, thought I had washed until I looked in my purse the next morning!  But in all reality it had been years since I had really looked at all of them anyway and I had to let go!

We also have pretty glasses/goblets. Just random mismatched glasses that caught our eye.  We aren’t wine drinkers but it has been fun every now and then to use them with dinner.  Who doesn’t want to drink water or milk from a fancy goblet? The kids always loved it too. But we don’t need them and space is limited to we had to purge. We reduced from about 20 down to 6. I’m not even sure we need 6 but I will fit them in if I can.

I have a lot left to do in the next few months but I’ve already had some tough decisions to make. The vase that my son in law gave me, the birdhouse my daughter painted, the photo albums from a friend.  I just don’t have room to take these things with me.  I would rather someone else take them and use them. They aren’t doing anyone any good sitting in a box in a storage unit.  Part of living simply is realizing I still have my memories and those memories and relationships mean more to me than the gifts ever will!