Is there a word for an object that is no longer kept for its original purpose but instead for sentimental value?

Question

The object in question would usually be no longer in use, or perhaps used extremely infrequently compared to when it was first brought. The piece should not be regarded as a waste of space, as the owner would view it with some sort of fondness due the positive experiences associated with its past use, so words like "piece of junk" or "clutter" should be avoided.

Redundant is an adjective (though I would prefer a noun) that might fit this purpose, however it does not reference the fact that the object has been retained out of nostalgia and also has negative connotations rather than positive.

Memento or keepsake are similar words to what I am looking for, however these are kept to remind of a specific person or event and not to remind of the extended past history and actions linked to that specific object itself.

An example might be a toy kept from the past or a laptop stored away after a new one has replaced it. I want to emphasise that in this case, the toy has not been retained because it reminds the owner of their childhood and the laptop has not been conserved because it was given to the owner by someone close to them. They have been kept instead to prompt memories of the interactions that the owner (and usually, only the owner) has had with them.

An example sentence would be something like:

Alice tends to hang onto a lot of _________, such as her PS3 from 10 years ago.

Answer 1

mathom /ˈmæðəm/

A lovely, ancient, and eminently modern word for this is mathom. The OED gives for the current sense of mathom:

2. A trinket, a piece of bric-a-brac.

But you need to know more about it that just that, for there’s more to it than just that.

Its original sense from Old English is now obsolete:

1. A precious thing, a treasure, a valuable gift. Obsolete

For its origin OED notes that:

Etymology: Cognate with Old Saxon mēðom (masculine) precious thing, a treasure, Old Icelandic meiðmar (feminine plural) valuables, Gothic maiþms (masculine) gift, ultimately < the Indo-European base of classical Latin mūtāre to exchange (see mutate v.).

The word was playfully revived in a slightly different sense (see sense 2) in the 20th. cent. by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Here’s a Middle English citation:

• c1275 (▸?a1200) Laȝamon Brut (Calig.) (1963) 896
  Ȝeue us þe king & al his gold, & þa maðmes of his lond.

In other words, “Give us the king and all his gold, and the mathoms of his land.” They were after treasure.

Tolkien’s “playful revival” of the word in a slightly different sense appears first in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, where he wrote:

At no time had Hobbits of any kind been warlike, and they had never fought among themselves. In olden days they had, of course, been often obliged to fight to maintain themselves in a hard world; but in Bilbo's time that was very ancient history. The last battle, before this story opens, and indeed the only one that had ever been fought within the borders of the Shire, was beyond living memory: the Battle of Greenfields, S.R. 1147, in which Bandobras Took routed an invasion of Orcs. Even the weathers had grown milder, and the wolves that had once come ravening out of the North in bitter white winters were now only a grandfather's tale. So, though there was still some store of weapons in the Shire, these were used mostly as trophies, hanging above hearths or on walls, or gathered into the museum at Michel Delving. The Mathom-house it was called; for anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were of that sort.

And it has been used by other authors, in non-Hobbitty contexts, since then. For example, the OED provides (among others) a citation from Byte magazine:

• 1998 Byte Jan. 123/1
  A storage company where I keep a bunch of mathoms—stuff I can't quite bring myself to throw away.

See also the LotR Wiki entry for this word, which begins with:

Mathom was the hobbit term for anything which they had no use for but were unwilling to throw away. Their holes and houses usually were quite crowded with mathoms. Hobbits were very fond of giving mathoms to one another; on birthdays, it was tradition that the hobbit who had the birthday would give a gift to anyone who attended his party. This way mathoms travelled from hand to hand often around the whole Shire, sometimes finding their way back to the original owner. Weapons and other gear of war was usually looked upon as mathoms in the Shire and usually they became trophies hanging over fireplaces or on walls.

Answer 2

Keepsake - \ ˈkēp-ˌsāk \

You’ve already noted it in your question, but keepsake is actually a correct answer here. Mathom is an interesting word however nobody but Tolkein enthusiasts will know what it means.

From Merriam Webster (use in a sentence):

saved the tassel from her mortarboard as a keepsake of her high school graduation

Example from an online article (example from Merriam Webster):

Keeping baby clothes and momentos Last year, Joanna created the cutest keepsakes for her kids: Memory boxes for each child stored in clear fabric bins, filled with their baby items and a handwritten letter.

-Jessica Leigh Mattern, Country Living, "10 of Chip and Joanna Gaines' Sweetest Family Traditions You’ll Want to Copy ASAP," 9 July 2018

Answer 3

How about memorabilia:

1 : things that are remarkable and worthy of remembrance: a wealth of early railroad memorabilia

2 : things that stir recollection or are valued or collected for their association with a particular field or interest: mementos baseball memorabilia

(merriam-webster)

1 [treated as singular or plural] Objects kept or collected because of their associations with memorable people or events.

‘sixties memorabilia’

(oxforddictionaries)

Answer 4

Souvenir:

[Merriam-Webster]

: something that serves as a reminder

When I went to the Super Bowl, I kept my ticket stub as a souvenir.
kept their love letters as souvenirs of their courtship

---

Edited: To address a comment, an old laptop (assuming it's not just junk) is a souvenir of an earlier time. Especially if it serves no other purpose than to exemplify how things used to be and remind you of them. (It's similar to keeping a typewriter or an 8-track tape.)

Answer 5

A relic is "a surviving memorial of something past", which seems just about perfect for your purpose.
To be sure, the most common association is with the relics of saints - fragments of the True Cross, or the bones of St. Mark - but relics are not necessarily religious. (Despite the similarity of spelling, "relic" and "religion" are derived from different Latin roots.)

Historical artifacts, outmoded ideas, and even retired persons are often called "relics", so there's no reason your old laptop can't be one too.

A few examples of this usage of "relic":

A Burial, Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

To-day I had a burial of my dead.
There was no shroud, no coffin, and no pall,
No prayers were uttered and no tears were shed -
I only turned a picture to the wall.
A picture that had hung within my room
For years and years; a relic of my youth.
It kept the rose of love in constant bloom
To see those eyes of earnestness and truth.

The Third Etage, author unknown, from "Household Words: A Weekly Journal, Volume 1" (edited by Charles Dickens):

It so happened that, as I dived into one of my big trunks in sorting my clothes, I came upon a leather case that contained a daguerrotype, a relic of my youth.

Matters of the Heart, Danielle Steel:

"I was thinking it might be nice to go to the Cape. I'd like you to see the house. It's very simple, but it's a relic of my childhood. That house means a lot to me."

Answer 6

token TFD

2. a symbol or visible representation of something

As in:

He is also planning to bring them some reminders of their past, although his office did not say what those tokens would be.

Answer 7

Vestigial

Adjective, but a noun in Biology

1. forming a very small remnant of something that was once greater or more noticeable. "he felt a vestigial flicker of anger from last night" synonyms: remaining, surviving, residual, leftover, lingering; More persisting, abiding, lasting, enduring "he feels a vestigial flicker of anger from last night"
2. Biology (of an organ or part of the body) degenerate, rudimentary, or atrophied, having become functionless in the course of evolution. "the vestigial wings of kiwis are entirely hidden"

Answer 8

How about 'antique'? People often keep these for ornamental purposes long after they have stopped using them.

Answer 9

Trophy or relic

an object kept as a reminder or souvenir of a person or event.

Answer 10

Take it easy!

I was just thinking about an adverb: 'Nostalgically'

in a way that involves thinking about things that happened in the past with happy and also slightly sad feelings

There are some examples here:

1.Alexander spoke nostalgically of his old laptop.

2.The drink had put Jason in an amiable mood, he talked nostalgically about his old toys.

.

You can also use: 'Nostalgic':

if you feel nostalgic about a time in the past, you feel happy when you remember it, and in some ways you wish that things & objects had not changed

3. Seeing those old school photographs has made me feel quite nostalgic.

4. Tom even peddles his line of nostalgic shirts on line.