It’s important to state that I am the most insufferably sentimental person I know.
There are old birthday cards collecting dust in my jam-packed cupboards, stuffed toys – their colours long-faded – sitting in my bedroom despite their prime cuddling years over, while gifts handmade by friends I no longer talk to take up real estate on my cluttered shelves. You couldn’t pay me to part with any of them.
My apartment is chock-full of these nostalgic knick-knacks – which makes dusting incredibly labour-intensive. I can even pinpoint exactly when and where I got each one.
The hot-pink alpaca teddy on my bookshelf? I won it in an arcade game in Japan a decade ago – first try! There’s a coffee-stained print of Matisse’s Blue Nude II I found on the side of the road with my first roommate, still hanging proudly on my wall. A One Direction T-shirt I bought as a teenager at one of their last concerts remains in my weekly pyjama rotation, despite it no longer fitting my adult body.
There are some recent additions, such as my tiny collection of Sylvanian Family critters gifted to me by a friend last Christmas. Or beloved hand-me-downs, including a ceramic ram that belonged to my grandma.
I would describe my interior style choices as sentimental maximalism. Others might say I have the early signs of a hoarding problem.
The era of trinket collecting is in full swing within my generation. Spurred on by economic instability and the dreaded inevitability of “proper” adulthood replacing the remaining strands of adolescence, I am one of many who are ditching minimalism in favour of mementoes. It’s impossible to be sad when your home is filled with so much saccharine!
Whimsy and nostalgia have been transformed into lifelines, but are we simply digging our claws deeper into a reality that no longer exists?
After all, not all my trinkets bring positive emotions. I feel the twang of heartache whenever I see an object associated with someone no longer in my life. It’s not a fun experience when I’m just trying to make my morning coffee.
There are also items scattered across my home that bring me unadulterated cringe. Dusty anime figurines from a bygone era of nerdy teenagehood, diaries from my early 20s filled with melodramatic angst, a framed picture of Lana Del Rey I made when I was in the depths of my stan Twitter phase. I could go on forever (but please don’t make me).
They are humiliating, but I have a soft spot in my heart for them all.
All the trinkets I own reflect the person I was, who I am now and the people who were by my side along the way. It might be easier to go on a social media stalk whenever I get a hankering to wander down memory lane – my apartment would be a hell of a lot tidier too – but there’s something magical about being able to access the past in tangible, physical ways. If you’ve ever mattered to me at any time in my life, odds are a part of you will always have a place in my home.
My mum keeps a small amber-coloured glass bird on her dresser, gifted to her by a friend in the 70s who passed unexpectedly. She tells me she has kept it all these years (even surviving multiple international moves) because it acts as a tether to the memory of her friend. Remembering keeps her alive.
I can relate. In my birthday card cupboard, there’s a special one from my 16th. It’s decorated with Hello Kitty’s image, and written by a close friend that reads: “I wish you the best for the rest of this week, and the next, and the next, and the rest of forever!”
She was killed the following year, and I reread it whenever the pain of her loss hits me at random. A small part of her remains in my life.
It’s easy to dismiss trinkets as dust-collecting novelties, but they are so much more meaningful. To me, they aren’t just things. They represent the always-growing mosaic of our lives, and all the people we have ever loved during it.
