KonMari  Insight Blog  Series.

When Greg and I married several years ago, we decided that we would keep a trunk for keepsakes from our adventures together. This included vacations, our wedding, belated honeymoon, day trips, and daily life. We thought it would be an organized way to contain souvenirs and all of the treasures we found together. Since then, we’ve kind of altered that plan.

Wedding:  I saved everything.  We had a steampunk themed event. So I had handmade invitations, handmade costumes, feather flowers.  Our cake had these feather roses, so I saved those as well.  Our ceremony was at Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City, so I saved pamphlets and brochures from the museum and took tons of pictures.  The reception was in a saloon, so I saved dice and drink tokes.  Into the trunk it all went.

Honeymoon: A year later, we went to Washington DC on our belated honeymoon.  We both love museums and DC is a history buff’s paradise.  We went everywhere and collected stuff from each place we visited.  We crammed it all into our suitcase, along with a “new” hobby … squashed pennies. We found hundreds of places to get them, and we got most of them.  When we got home, I put them all straight into our memory trunk.

Vacations:  We have gone to Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Oregon, California, and more.  We’ve done renaissance fairs (Greg as a monk, and me as a pirate captain) and Disneyland. We’ve collected bits and bobs from all of them, although as the years went on we scaled back on the pennies. It was getting crazy and expensive.  So we tapered off and  just collected the best of the best we found.  And, yes, after every trip, our collection of pamphlets and odd bits went right into the trunk.

Two years ago,  I decluttered the house, but didn’t touch the trunk.  It was special, but I dreaded doing it. I knew what was in there, all of our memories, trapped in a box. What a sad thought!  When I did finally open the trunk, a year later,  everything had a forgotten look about it. Even though I thought packed it carefully, things were crumpled forlorn. The petals from our feather wedding flowers just fell apart when I touched them. Pennies were everywhere. My pirate hat was bent.  Our special memories no longer looked so special.

I took everything out and KonMaried it with Greg.  What remained was really a fraction of what we had.  I wasn’t  sure what to do with it all though.  I didn’t want it  all to go back into the trunk. I wanted to see it.

I bought a few shadowbox picture frames.  After playing around with filling them for awhile, I came up with arrangements we both really like.  Now they hang in our bedroom.  We see them everyday and are reminded of our trips and fun times.  I am still always amazed, or maybe I’m just a slow learner, at how just a few things have so much more impact than a whole pile.