I'm excited (and a little terrified) to embark on the biggest change of my life. Rhys and I have an opportunity to make a lifelong dream come true by living in Valencia, Spain for a year ... and we're taking it!...

Funny story…. After my sister read my most recent blog post about my getting rid of memorabilia, she sent a text expressing her surprise that I had kept my creepy-looking babydoll all these years (25+). As you can probably guess, I have a reputation within my family for not keeping much of anything! Her text got me thinking about why I had held onto these, and other, childhood relics for so many years and why it was so easy for me to part with them now.

In terms of organizing projects, memorabilia can be the most difficult category to tackle. We keep tangible objects to remember an event, a place, an experience, a loved one, or just because it makes us happy.

As a happy minimalist, I don't keep much memorabilia by choice. I'm not a heartless robot - I just appreciate things/objects as they happen in the present moment and don't tend to hold onto many things.

Nearly everyone has a box (or more!) of memorabilia - special items they want to keep in order to remember an event or a person or a trip. Greeting cards and letters fall squarely into this category.

One question I get asked most frequently by my clients is: "So Shannon, have you ever donated or thrown out something you wish you had kept?" And I always answer this question the same way…

When visiting my family in Minnesota in November, my mom presented me with a box full of my papers from grade school that she didn't want to keep at her house any longer. Vowing to go through the box soon, I brought it back with me to Atlanta and promptly hoisted it onto the highest shelf in my closet. "Soon" turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months.