Character Costume Challenge: 'Object' Edition

It's that time again, and I'm so excited to be getting to participate in Gillian Adams' Characters in Costume Challenge! I was so excited when she announced last month that she was making it a monthly event!
This month's specification was an object - something your character carries or values or always has with them. So I decided I would feature my character Alice Ewing's necklace.

Alice Ewing is a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in the United States during the Great Depression/Dustbowl era. After the deaths of both her parents, Alice finds herself homeless and is forced to join her drifter half-brother, Frederick, as he rides the rails in search of work.

Alice wears her necklace all the time, and everywhere she goes. It never comes off. It consists of a simple, plain chain, on which she carries a whole host of different trinkets and small useful items. Some of the items come and go as the need arises, but some of them are there all the time.
The key is to the house Alice and her parents lived in. After her parents died and Alice was evicted, she took the key with her - it's the last piece she has of the home she loved.
The ring belonged to her mother, but in the impoverished world Alice lives in, it's not safe to draw attention by wearing it on her hand, so she carries it on a necklace under her shirt, out of sight.
The pocket watch belonged to her father, and was given to him by his father.
The little wheel/gear thing is just one of those items that Alice has picked up along the way. While it could serve a useful purpose - as a spare button, for instance - collecting little items like that has sort of become a habit with Alice. She just picks things up and puts them on her necklace, just because.

"It's a hard life on the roads and the rails. And the world isn't kind."  ~ Frederick

 

"When the world forces you out of the home and the life you've always known, I guess you just have to carry whatever pieces you can with you. And then - maybe - the home that's still in your heart will come to live in those little pieces, so that sooner or later you're carrying your whole home in those little pieces. It's a nice thought, anyway."   ~from Alice's journal