I once decorated a mirror with shells, but I keep it in a closet. I’m fond of it, even though it looks a little sloppy. Sometimes I’ll debate whether to toss it, and then gently put it back on the shelf.
As it turns out, a lot of us have strong attachments to things we make — even when they’re kind of hideous, said Michael Norton, a professor of business administration at Harvard and the author of “The Ritual Effect.”
Dr. Norton once took a stone-carving class, he told me, and tried to chisel a symbol (“the best description I can give is a circle shape with flames”), but part of the stone broke off “so it looked like it was made by a toddler.” Yet every time he moved homes, he carefully wrapped the stone nub in bubble tape and brought it with him.