Jewelry detox allows fave pieces to shine
To downsize collection, discard, give away, sell, repair or repurpose your treasures
Debbie Roes owns the largest jewelry box she could find, but it was still so full she had difficulty seeing her belongings. So she decided to de-clutter it as part of an overall purging of her possessions, and the result made her happy.
“It used to be so cluttered that I didn’t really know what I had, and many pieces I loved weren’t being worn,” said Roes, of San Diego.
Many people accumulate extra jewelry over the years and could benefit from organizing it better. That might mean discarding, giving away, selling, repairing or repurposing pieces, said Cyndy Aldred of Lufkin, Texas, author of Idiot’s Guides: Organizing Your Life (Alpha Books, 2014).
Begin by weeding out those you never wear.
Roes did that, and quickly parted with 20 of her 282 pieces. She also pulled out jewelry that was broken, and either had it fixed or got rid of it.
Then she grouped together like pieces, which helped her realize that she had many duplicates.
“I tended to buy a lot of similar things. What we’re drawn to when shopping is what we’re familiar with,” she said.
Once the jewelry was sorted, Roes forced herself to pick her favourites. She donated, gave away or sold the rest.
She did several purges like this so as not to deplete her collection too quickly, she said. In between purges, she would move the pieces she wore into different drawers in the jewelry box. The pieces that hadn’t been moved by the next purge were good candidates to get rid of.
If you’re unsure about discarding something, Aldred suggested, put it in a box in a harder-to-reach location. If you haven’t retrieved it after a year, get rid of it, she said.
She also suggested having a jewelry exchange party at which friends gather to swap pieces.
“You feel better about purging when you give it to someone you know will use it,” she said.
Compared to clothing, jewelry is easy to give to friends and relatives because it’s usually one-size-fits-all, Roes noted.
You might feel guilty, however, about giving away something you spent money on. Don’t feel guilty, she said.
Kathy Zaltas, who owns Zaltas Gallery of Fine Jewelry in Mamaroneck, New York, said customers often bring in their jewelry boxes or ones they have inherited, wondering what to do with the contents.
Zaltas helps them determine which pieces are valuable, which could be repaired or made into something new, and which could be sold.
“People acquire jewelry that they don’t wear anymore,” she said. “It has a monetary value if you want to scrap it. It doesn’t need to sit and sit.”
She also works with clients to transform out-of-date pieces into something new. Carol Manire almost never takes off the necklace that Zaltas made from some of her mother’s old jewelry. She had taken several pieces into the store after her mother died because keeping them in a safe at her home in Port Chester, New York, “felt like I was not honouring her memory properly.”
She and Zaltas did “a lot of back and forth,” she said, “turning it into something I really love and is meaningful to me.”
Roes, who blogs at recoveringshopaholic.com, has heard from readers who frame heirloom pieces or find other ways to display them.
Another option is to store sentimental pieces that you don’t wear somewhere less accessible than your jewelry box to save space, Aldred said.
“My jewelry box is stuff that I regularly wear,” she said.
“Purging and reorganizing how we store our jewelry and accessories is a great way to save time and frustration when we’re getting ready [to go out], because we can go right to the pieces we are looking for.”