A keepsake can be meaningful without being useful to the next person expected to store it.

Meaning is not transferable in the way objects are. A thing that holds one person’s whole history arrives at somebody else as a box that needs a shelf, and the second person is left choosing between guilt and space. Neither of them is being careless; the meaning simply did not travel with the item. What made it precious was a memory, and memories cannot be handed over directly.

If you are keeping things for others, write down the story that goes with two or three of them. If you have inherited a houseful, photographing what you cannot keep is a fair way to hold it.