Art of Rearrangement . . .

What is Saving? It is protecting, conserving, rescuing, salvaging, reviving, and the storing of precious things, or maybe not so precious things, yet important enough for you to cherish. The past has value. Most of all, saving is not holding onto things you don’t need, it’s about holding onto things that teach us who we are and where we came from.
So, you save things. You put them away. You store them perhaps thinking that may be one day it will get used again. However, that day does not come and the things are still in the boxes. What do you do? Throw them away? NO! Give them away? NO! What you should do is take the things out of the box, give them a fair assessment and then ask yourself if you should keep them? The answer is YES! Why? Because something possessed you to keep them in the first place.

Yes, it is a challenge to organized and hold onto things, however, by creating a Family Museum, you are preserving your memories. The way to achieve success at this endeavor is the art of rearrangement, how to organize those things in a systematized, orderly arrangement, and by doing this fixes the problem of disorganization.

The key word is organization – one box at a time. The selecting part takes time. Picking the items out, deciding between one or more of the heirlooms, dividing the space equally, and sometimes having to draw the line as to what gets saved.

There is an art to display. Look at museum’s smaller collections, department store showcase windows or visit antique shops and observe how a vendor presents their collections. The space you have will dictate how you will display your heirlooms. Organize items in groups. The main idea is to express through display the history of the heirloom and the person behind it.

Now you ask, where is there space in my home? Take a walk around your house, apartment, condo, wherever you call home. Pay particular attention to unused space. Closets, spare bedrooms, roomy hallways. A modicum of space in the living, dining, and family room will do fine. Assess the space. What is there now? How is it used? What is displayed? Can it be moved somewhere else? Can you eliminate some of those things? Bookcases, china and curio cabinets can be mini-museums. Even create personal museums, such as in the home office displaying the occupant’s career. Also in a child’s bedroom where they can create their own museum.

But remember, the main purpose of saving things is to display them. That is the principle reason for your Family Museum. There is plenty of help through websites that guide you, suggesting ways & means that fit your situation. This blog, How to Create a Family Museum, has a plethora of instructions and ideas of how to go about incorporating the art of rearrangement. Look through the blog’s archives and select the post that will give you the most help. Tomorrow I will address how to archive family keepsakes. 

Professional organizer Scott Roewer coined the phrase, “Art of Rearrangement.”