“A beautiful thing about entering into a life with someone is growing and evolving,” Spain says. “How can you view this as an opportunity for you to grow as an individual, as part of a relationship, and as somebody who’s sharing your life with another person?”
Assuming you’re up for the challenge of exploring something new together, he suggests diving into aesthetic research, and push yourself to be curious by looking through vintage books and magazines for rooms that incorporate the colors, finishes, and silhouettes of the sentimental objects. “Then use that as a sounding board and develop a shared vocabulary between you and your partner,” Spain says.
He suggests focusing on Scandinavian designers. “With this kind of rustic country vibe plus more modernist leanings, I went to Northern Europe,” Spain says. “So Finn Juhl, Josef Frank, Eric Gunner Asplund—there’s a long history of these rural or pastoral aesthetics bumping up against more modernist gestures.”
In How to Live With Objects: A Guide to More Meaningful Interiors, authors Jill Singer and Monica Khemsurov, of Sight Unseen, dedicate an entire chapter to sentimental objects, which “transform our homes into a rich visual diary,” they write. “We keep these objects not because they look good or make us look good, but because we find them moving.”
If these pieces aren’t feeling cohesive with the rest of the space, Singer suggests finding areas where they can become “a gem of a moment instead of sticking out like a sore thumb,” she says. She thinks you could create a tonal moment in an entryway or a bathroom where you’re building around the object.
Singer also says that refinishing an object, if your partner is open to it, can also help. Having this conversation also involves a delicate touch.
“I would say, ‘I don’t know if this goes with the vision I think that we have for our house; what are some ways that we could amend it or transform it so that it’s still a special piece and maybe it fits in a little bit better?’” And then there’s the opportunity to reframe what the piece is. “You’re transforming it from a sentimental object for one into something that’s sentimental for both because you created it together,” she says.
