Decluttering the Dugout: A KonMari Consultant’s Take on Blue Jays Memories

Decluttering the Dugout: A KonMari Consultant’s Take on Blue Jays Memories

Here’s how one well-loved Blue Jays shirt reminded me that memories matter more than memorabilia.

Wow! What a rollercoaster few weeks we’ve had watching the Toronto Blue Jays! From the highs of every home run to the heartbreaks that followed, the Jays have taken us on quite the emotional journey.

My family has always been a baseball family. We cheered them on through the glory days of 1992 and 1993, through the quieter seasons that followed, and right up to this latest postseason run. The Jays have been part of our family’s fabric for decades; woven into summer evenings, living room celebrations, and the occasional superstitious refusal to wash a lucky jersey mid-series (don’t judge, it’s part of the ritual).

So what does all this have to do with home organizing? Well, maybe not much on the surface, but it is the perfect time to talk about sentimental items and how deeply our memories are stitched into them.

If you’ve bought any Jays gear this season — a hat, a T-shirt, maybe even a foam finger — chances are it’ll instantly bring you back to the games, the excitement and the hope that this would be our year. These items are emotional time machines.

But here’s something I remind my clients of all the time: one day, when the time feels right, you can let go of that shirt, mug, or hat. The memories won’t vanish along with the clutter. They’ll stay right where they’ve always been; in your heart

Let me tell you about my 1992 World Series shirt. Like thousands of others, I bought one right after the Jays beat Atlanta for our first-ever championship. It was a favourite for a while, though by the next spring it had already faded and been demoted to sleepwear.

When I travelled through Europe the following summer, that shirt came with me. A few days into my trip, I arrived at a hostel in Stockholm and met my roommate — a woman from, you guessed it, Atlanta. We laughed when she saw my shirt, and that one coincidence became part of my trip’s memories.

Later, in St. Petersburg, Russia, the hotel doorman noticed the same shirt and pointed to it with a grin. “Toronto!” he’d exclaim whenever he saw me. On my last day, I gave the shirt to him for his son, who loved baseball. That small gesture, and his huge smile, are things I’ll never forget, even though the shirt has long since moved on.

When the Jays made their postseason run the following year, the celebrations at my parents’ house became the stuff of legend. Friends would crowd around the TV with my Nan leading the cheers, while my mom and dad kept a steady stream of wings and nachos coming from the kitchen. We’ve reminisced about those rowdy nights so many times since. Whenever the Jays do well now, we like to imagine Nan is still cheering them on from heaven.

After the ’93 victory, I bought a sweatshirt that I wore proudly for a while before it eventually found its way into a box of keepsakes. When I finally did my first big KonMari Tidying Festival in 2021, that sweatshirt resurfaced, alongside a pair of (very small) Ralph Lauren jeans and a U2 concert tee — apparently my definition of “important university fashion.”

My daughter was thrilled to discover these “vintage” treasures and promptly claimed them. She’s worn that old Jays sweatshirt at university, especially during this most recent playoff run, and it makes me smile every time I see her in it. The joy that shirt once sparked for me is now sparking joy for her. Proof that the emotional energy we attach to items can carry on long after we’ve moved past the phase of wearing them ourselves.

And speaking of rediscovering old gear, the photo with this article shows my husband’s original 1992 Jays sweat-shirt, which I found buried in our Halloween costume box (no idea why it was there, though it may have had a second life as a last-minute “baseball player” costume). I washed it, brightened it up and secretly hoped he’d get to wear it again if the Jays had gone all the way this year.

In the end, this is all a nostalgic way of saying: it’s perfectly fine to hold on to sentimental items, especially when they remind us of joyful moments and shared experiences. But remember, the memories don’t live in the items. They live in the stories, the laughter and the retelling of them around the dinner table.

That 1992 shirt that I gave away still brings me joy every time I think of it, because what mattered wasn’t the cotton and ink, it was everything that happened while I wore it. I don’t need the actual shirt – I have the memories.

And maybe that’s the real lesson the Blue Jays teach us, season after season: sometimes you win, sometimes you let go. But the love of the game and the memories that come with it, never really fade. We’ll get ‘em next year!