case study Eclectic Bedroom, Portland

Old suitcases serve as storage for the family's trinkets and treasures. Not only are the suitcases good looking, they serve a purpose as well. Smith says, "I like to decorate my home with things that look as though they have a story to tell."

How clever is this? Fronted with glass, a suitcase lid makes for a delightful display.

Finishing up and moving forward. As you get further into the process of editing your keepsakes, choose a special container to house the keepers. This container should be small enough for you to carry easily and sturdy enough to protect its treasured contents from mildew and critters. Keep your special box in the main part of your house, somewhere it can be quickly and easily located if you ever needed to evacuate.As you work your way through all of your stuff, ask yourself of each item, Does this deserve a spot in The Box? I urge you not to wiggle on this point. Don't make it two or three boxes. Just one box. Go ahead and keep a larger bunch of not-quite-so-important keepsakes in a different location, if you must, but when it comes to The Box, be ruthless. Over time you may come to realize that the stuff not in the box doesn't really need to be taking up all of that valuable real estate, and when you are ready, you can move on from it. But having a single box of most treasured belongings is something wonderful in itself. If the rest of it disappeared, you would know it would be OK — that if this one box were left, it would be enough to be your legacy.Houzz guides: More pain-free ways to declutter

I’m not saying you need to have a large concrete Virgin Mary in your living room (like I do), but you should consider adding something you find sacred to your main living spaces. It can be traditional, such as a wedding portrait of your great-grandmother or an ancestor’s framed love letter written in another language, or it can be something unexpected, like a tiny lock of hair from your child’s first haircut in a shadow box. Whatever you incorporate, it should be something that makes your heart feel good when you look at it.

I didn’t have strong family roots of my own, but I could borrow from our rented house the ones established by its original occupants. As a teenager, I set up a room in the basement of our house as my hangout, where I discovered family treasures stored there: straw and velvet hats from the turn of the century, a framed newspaper clipping about a lithography business in San Francisco, a little Cinderella wind-up doll, missing her prince (though she still twirled quite happily on her own). They weren’t my things, but I treasured them nonetheless.During our first round of living in the house, my mom had periodically marked my height on the shingles of the front porch, alongside the markings still there from the original family’s children — all of them by then long grown. I still remember the disorientation I felt when I saw the landlord’s name, age and height, marked down from his childhood, on the wall. By the time I knew him, he was an old man.When we returned to live in the house a second time, the markings were still there, including mine. I realized that the history of the owner’s family had melded with my own, creating a sort of hybrid lineage that filled in a few of the gaps in my genealogical tree. Borrowing their past shored up my own origin story and made me feel more consequential in the world.

I have these trunks - I want to make them into a light

Beautiful display of memories from ago! I have a suitcase like this one.