The Place of Sentimentality in Design

#designingwithbelongings #interiordesignadvice #downsizing

I would never be considered the sentimental type, but I also firmly believe your space should reflect who you are. Curating personal belongings of clients is a difficult and messy business. On your side, its your responsibility to ensure as many of their treasured belongings make it into a new space as possible. On their side, there has to be the acceptance that many of their old items may not fit or serve the new space like they once did. The road to acceptance is littered with fragments of a life lived and lived fully.

Does the person you’ve hired to be the cleaner, curator and organizer of your space think that there are so many more chapters of your life yet to come to celebrate to be weighed down by every item of your past? Absolutely.

Sentimentality is both a wonderful thing and the shackles that can keep people bound to a certain time and place. In some cases, these things are trophies. Signs that you made it in life. Like that first home you thought would be your forever home, but you maybe hold onto it long after you’ve outgrown it. Is it enough that an object has had a life in your care and now may be the start to someone else’s story?

When we first moved to Kamloops 10 years ago, we had hardly any money. In the words of Bon Jovi, we were livin’ on a prayer and we have nothing left to lose. We moved with nothing but our suitcases and our pets. We had no furniture and we had put down two months of rent ahead of moving here and when I landed I had a quilt, a small pot and I remember sleeping on the floor of our new basement suite with my dog and best friend Lily. I found a free cane back chair in the classifieds and walked to the neighbourhood to pick it up because I was too afraid to take the bus in a new city.

When I got to the home, the chair was just sitting outside in front of the garage. It looked like a pretty sturdy old office chair with little mismatched casters for wheels. I called my parents and asked if I should just take it, or if I should knock and make sure it was really mine for the taking. Their advice was to knock and ask. I knocked on the door and asked what I can only assume was both a bewildered and unamused teenage son if I could, in fact, take the chair out front. To which he unenthusiastically said “Yuh.”

I still own this chair, but it is in my pile of items to donate for a fresh start to the new year. Though this item carries sentimental value, and gave me the joy of sitting on my new front porch overlooking the Kamloops view for those first few summer evenings and later provided extra seating for newfound friends for some time, it no longer has a purpose in my life. We have nesting furniture for seating many more friends and better furniture in general. It’s time for it to find a new home and be part of someone else’s great life story. It now officially belongs to anyone who sees it and wants or needs it, just like I did.

Maybe it was that great untethering when we moved across the country, but I don’t feel as tied to belongings. I don’t think there’s a thing that we own or have made that I would be unwilling to part with, save for a couple of special journals about our life and about our son’s. Everything else are just things that are things of a time and place. The important thing is the memory. A photo and a story in a journal and memoir would suffice, but thats not to say I don’t appreciate these life trophies other people have collected.

I do think that when it comes to belongings that are deeply personal, it can be hard to tell someone that their trophy is no longer outwardly valuable, because to them it is invaluable.

As a designer, there is a bit of difficulty in finding balance. You want to marry the item to the person to whom it belongs, but what happens when space no longer allows these large items for the sake of downsizing?

I recently read an article in Forbes Magazine from 7 years ago titled “Sorry, but Nobody Wants Your Parents Stuff” and its subsequent response article. It lamented over the harsh reality that the Sears matched furniture sets went the way of Sears itself. These are all anecdotes of the realities of the time in which we are living. The hoarding of items that mean little to those who come after you. The same people who are left to deal with the aftermath of your belongings. The guilt your offspring have associated with giving things away that were important to you, but have no value to them or those who come after them, especially if they don’t know the story associated with them.

There likely wouldn’t be much in my parents groupings of things that I would jump at the chance to own, but there are some things I’ve admired. An old 1960’s long stereo and turntable, some of my dad’s record collection, my maternal grandmother’s filigree charm bracelet and I would love to finally finish refinishing my mom’s old antique table and sell it so someone who’s house really would benefit from it so it could live a big beautiful life with a big family around it. I think she would like that. I think that has always been her hope for it. Who knows, maybe it fits in her retirement plan already and I’m jumping ahead.

I think it ends up being a question of why you feel you need to hold onto these items, if they don’t serve you. Are they tied to dreams achieved? Are they reminders of people in your life? Do they represent unfinished business?

Is it worth having items that feel like a hug when you see them, if they have become no longer fit in your life or those that come after you?

Could you find the same sense of recollection and warmth when you open your journal, see a photo and read a story about how that item served you?

Would you later wonder and daydream about whether somewhere else, some other family is having their first thanksgiving dinner around that table now? While you, sit around a different table, with a new generation of family members and share that photo and story of your first dining room table.

Is there a place for sentimentality in design? Of course. But the form it takes, is going to vary by individual.

Curating personal belongings, is always and without question, the hardest part of being a designer. We want to respect and incorporate what you own, but not at the cost of good design sense either.

Can you meet us halfway?

What are you willing to let go of in the name of growth and change?