Fred, your daughters are very lucky.
My cats generally ignore the karate stuff in our home, but they do like to sit on my palm-training bean bags when I leave them in the living room. I'm sure that cat-dander and mung-bean dust go well together.
I have one other item that has deep sentimental value even though it sits in a brown paper bag in a drawer in my office. In the bag is the 16mm film and mag reel for a student film project made the night before my green belt test. So there I am, a four-striper, doing kanshiwa kata in the film. The exercise was to explore different exposure rates, in particular - slow motion.
I haven't seen the footage (which is set to Zydeco music) in about 10 years (next Wednesday is my 10-year anniversary in Uechi.) So I really need to dig it out, pay to get it transferred to DVD, and then share it with folks so they can watch, laugh, and enjoy. I think there is a particularly dramatic moment of the ends of my white belt swinging back and forth after a turn....oh jeez....
Anyway - I love that film because it was taken in our old dojo before we moved into a health club, my brother was there that night watching the filming, and we just had so much fun making it.
Seizan-san sent me a little note about another use for memorabilia that hadn't occured to me...function.
In the Nagahama Dojo...there is a long shelf with small statuettes and other items. These are not decorations however. Each piece holds a lesson that relates directly to our training. If I want to explain a concept or technique in other than words, I can use one of those items - a teaching technique that usually works like a charm. If I want to teach "mushin" I actually have a statue of a Chinese goddess that teaches the concept quite nicely. If I want to teach continuous and circular motion, I have a little magnetic toy that shows the swing action to convey this concept well too. If I want to teach proper use of hands, eyes, posture, balance, and flexibility, I have an iron statue from Thailand that shows it well. And several others. That's only if my words do not get through quite as well as I wish.
....
The nafuda (name-plates) are hung in order of rank to honor the hard work of the students. All names are in Kanji and romaji (or kana and romaji for foreign students). When I recently replaced several nafuda with better wood, I gave the old name-plates to those studnets, too. This was very special to those students, especially the children.
I have only one belt hung in the dojo. It is my Rokkudan belt, which is retired now but shown because it was a gift from Sensei and the Zakimi Dojo. The lesson it teaches is one of loyalty and sharing.
So, there are no decorations in the dojo at all. Everything is functional or pragmatically placed, and has a meaning that directly relates to the training or the history of the dojo and system.