Sentimental

As I sift through my stuff, I struggle the most with two categories - items that need repair/making/redoing and sentimental items. 

Take, for example, my grandmother's tea cups. She passed away just over a year ago, and I miss her all the time. A part of her personality was taking great pride in her possessions. She definitely did not own lot, but what she did own she used and talked about with such pride. Afternoon tea with my grandma was something of a tradition. You couldn't be visiting without having afternoon tea. And when she used her lovely tea cups from around the world, you knew it was a special tea. 

She used to collect them during her travels

My cousins were asking where those tea cups went to, and I wasn't sure, until I came across them today as I was going through some of my boxes. So what do I do with those tea cups? I am not sure I'll display them, and will likely use them very infrequently, but they hold such a strong sentimental value to me (even though they were in a box in my basement and I didn't know where they were - the irony is not lost!)


For the moment I am going to keep them, but I am worried that this will start to unravel my minimalism. In The Minimalists' TEDxFargo they talked about taking photos of items and then letting them go, allowing others to use them. But I'm not sure I can do that yet... 

For now my solution is to put all of my sentimental items (because a tea cup is not the only one) in one box. If I have more than one box worth of items, I will go through them and pick the most sentimental items in order to restrain the collection to one box. One box of non-minimalism. Is it possible?