Let’s face it, there are many, many objects in my home that I haven’t been able to bring myself to toss, even though they have “no practical purpose” in my life.

If the world is divided into “keepers” and “throwers” (as my downsizing-the-home book-and-blog coauthor and I have defined it), then I am definitely of the “keeper” persuasion.

I come from a long line of “keepers” on both sides of my family. Through the years, this has been the source of a good deal of aggravation and occasionally even embarrassment—bordering on shame—for various members of my family, myself included.

It has also been the source of infinite delight in all the special things people in my family have saved, things that have made, of ancestors we never knew, characters with presence in our lives and stories to go with them.

So, even the concept of getting rid of something because it has “no practical purpose” is a curious one to me. If we kept only things that had a practical purpose, what would our homes be like? Clean and neat, certainly. But wouldn't they also be more than a bit cold and sterile?

Here are just a few of the things I have kept that have no practical purpose in my life: the pink plastic hospital wristband I wore as a newborn; an Alice in Wonderland watch with a pink canvas wristband (I found these two items in my Dad’s dresser after he died); a glob of hardened brown modeling clay that looks kind of like a lumpy rock. (My son made it for me when he was in kindergarten, and proudly presented it to me as “a butterfly.” I was writing about butterflies at the time and it is actually only now that I realize what a profoundly meaningful gift it was: at the time I just thought it was awfully sweet that through his eyes a roughly shaped hunk of modeling clay could be seen as a butterfly.)

One of the objects that has no practical purpose but is full of sentimental meaning for me is the cheap ceramic figurine my grandmother gave me for my birthday when I was 10 years old.

That was the year she gave me and each of my five girl cousins pieces in a matching “little homemaker” set. All of the little homemakers except mine were doing something useful: wiping dishes, serving cake, sweeping the floor, baking. My little homemaker was talking on the phone.

I was hurt and insulted, but I said nothing, just quietly stored the hurt away. “Grandma thinks I talk too much” is the message I got from that birthday present. I had kind of suspected that my grandmother disapproved of me—of who I was—before I received that gift. After all, I was the one who was always writing plays and then casting my cousins in them, probably luring them away from wiping the dishes or sweeping the floor. (Though I don’t actually remember ever doing any such thing, I do know that doing housework and writing plays are always kind of at odds with each other.)

It was more than 30 years later that a chance discovery of some pages from my grandmother’s journal (discovered in yet another dresser drawer in my parents’ home, full of many more items with no practical purpose), turned my previous perception of my grandmother (and more importantly my thoughts about how she perceived me) upside down and inside out. It was a jarring and deeply emotional discovery that has led me on a quest to find the grandmother I never knew, and is an important part of the story told in my next book.

Why did I keep the little ceramic figurine that had touched such a sensitive nerve in the first place?  Naturally, I kept it because I come from a family of keepers, and that is what you do with gifts given to you, even the ones you don’t like very much (sometimes).

In any case, I’m very glad I kept my “little housekeeper,” so that she was still around when the meaning I had originally derived from her was turned on its head.

Now, after years of being packed away in obscurity, the little girl with the telephone is always in an honored (and safe) place in my home. Every time I see her, even out of the corner of my eye, she reminds me of something important I have learned. About who I am, and about who my grandmother was. About how easy it is to misread those closest to us, and what dreadful mistakes we can make when we judge each other too harshly, when we fail to ask the questions we should ask of those we love—and then listen carefully to their answers.