Decluttering and Organizing Your Family's Sentimental Items
September 2026 - Organization Pending's Newsroom - Upper Arlington, Ohio
Organization Pending is a home organizing company offering in-person and virtual services from Upper Arlington, Ohio. Welcome to the Newsroom, offering decluttering and organizing tips and discussions, interviews with Community Recommendations, Columbus recycling and donation news and resources, and more!
Today we're talking about Sentimental Decluttering and Organizing, including how to prioritize digitization and why it's a smart family investment, with Nostalgia Navigator Tips to get you started!
And in Upper Arlington Updates, the Nostalgia Navigator team met with the community at the recent Upper Arlington Older Adults Resource Fair - and don't miss news about two upcoming costume swaps!
Sentimental Decluttering and Organizing
Basements are one of the main storage areas in most homes. Unfortunately, basements are also large, undefined spaces prone to collecting clutter. And many times, that clutter also contains your family's precious memorabilia, sentimental items, and the photos that aren't stored in albums and frames around the home.
But...
98% of U.S. basements will experience some water damage at least once, with 1 in 60 insured homes making an insurance claim for water or freezing damage yearly. (RubyHome)
U.S. Fire Departments respond to house fires an average of 900 times each day. (NFPA®)
More than 3 million Americans were displaced by natural disasters in 2023. (Urban Wire)
Simply put, many people are in danger of losing their family's irreplaceable legacy, and they're not sure where to start or who to trust when it comes to digitizing, let alone how to locate everything in their homes. In Columbus, Organization Pending and Vintage Solutions have partnered to solve this problem with their Nostalgia Navigator service, bringing together home organizing and digitizing to preserve your family's memories for future generations, and to grant families the ability to share their unique memories with extended family. Read more about our partnership in Nostalgia Navigator: Taking the Guesswork Out of Decluttering, Organizing, and Digitizing Your Family's Memories, or visit our landing page here.
Nostalgia Navigator Tip:
VHS, cassettes, and other audio-visual items are at the highest risk of deterioration by natural causes due to temperature fluctuations, the fragile nature of these items, and the wear and tear of using them. When prioritizing items for digitization, start here.
Sentimental Items as Clutter
Sentimental items can be the hardest items to let go of because of the memories attached to them. Working on other decluttering and organizing projects with lower stake items first can help build decluttering muscles, allowing us to take on emotional items when we're more equipped to sort through them. Leaving these items until last as part of a whole-home decluttering and organizing also ensures we have all our physical memories in one place, as well as allowing us to see what areas of the home that could be used to display items, fully enjoying them instead of storing them.
Nostalgia Navigator Tip:
Implement a sentimental container for each family member, living and deceased. Revisit these containers every 5-10 years, decluttering items that no longer hold meaning, and reincorporating favorites into your daily landscape.
Photos
Photo albums, framed pictures, boxes of loose photographs, slides, old computers and laptops...pictures are one of the largest categories in most people's sentimental bins, but they're difficult to browse or share with non-local family members, or they're trapped in old hardware.
Nostalgia Navigator Tip:
Ready to start decluttering and organizing your photos?
Declutter blurry photos, unimportant landscapes, duplicates, and photos of unknown people or pets. If you wouldn't be able to write a caption for it, it can be discarded.
Look for timestamps or handwritten dates, writing the month/year on a sticky note, and start organizing! Working on a large project? Use envelopes instead of sticky notes for quick storage.
Declutter kids' artwork yearly, asking them what their important pieces are. Consider digitizing this curated collection as a graduation gift, or use them to create unique personalized gifts through Vintage Solutions!
From not knowing where to start and being overwhelmed by your home and clutter, to being ready to digitize today - Nostalgia Navigator understands the journey families take towards preserving their memories, and we have the experts to guide you through the process. Get started today.
Upper Arlington Updates
Nostalgia Navigator at the Upper Arlington Older Adults Resource Fair
Thank you to everyone who joined the Nostalgia Navigator team at the Upper Arlington Older Adults Resource Fair on September 22, and thank you to the Upper Arlington Parks and Recreation Department for hosting!
Jaycee Knox (he/him) of Vintage Solutions and Tabi Berkey (they/them) of Organization Pending welcomed older adults and their families at their table, talking about our Nostalgia Navigator service. This combines home organizing and digitization, allowing clients to locate the physical memories in their homes, and preserve them.
Fair goers were ecstatic about these services, and we passed out all of the Nostalgia Navigator brochures and pricing folders we brought with us! Thank you again to the over 50 attendees and participants who stopped by to say hi and learn more - we're already looking forward to next year!
Upper Arlington Costume Swaps
Stop by the Upper Arlington Parks & Rec annual Fall Fest Sunday, October 4, 1-5pm at Fancyburg Park for a costume swap, pumpkin decorating, hayrides, corn maze, and other family-friendly fun! You can donate costumes now through October 3 at the Bob Crane Community Center (drop box by the elevators).
Didn't find the right fit at Fall Fest? Take a look at the Upper Arlington Public Library's Halloween Costume Swap Sunday, October 11, 1-3:30pm in the Youth Activity Space. You can drop off donations in the Youth department starting October 1.
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If you have an upcoming event, resource, or professional the community should know about, contact Organization Pending.
Organization Pending's Newsroom is written by Organization Pending's Owner/Operator Tabi Berkey unless otherwise stated. AI is not utilized in the creation of the Newsroom.
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