This article examines the material condition of memory in modern urban households. Data from an ethnography of households on a South London street shows how interior decor, collections of clothing, books, music and photographs, differentially structure remembering and forgetting. Household objects that unwittingly become part of memory through use may be contrasted with photographs that embody the intention to create memory. But the desire to preserve memory in images overflows into unintentional effects and utilitarian objects take on a dual life as archive through acts of storage. The ethnography reveals that although genres of material culture may be studied as if they have certain capacities for memory, individuals and households develop their own habits of memory, selecting between the genres in which they invest memory in the long term and utilising them differently. This understanding informs notions of shared and family memory.