At museums around the globe, preservation practices aim to stabilize objects in authentic material states sometimes designated as their “true nature”. Meanwhile, the absolute Others of museums – heritage eaters – are suppressed as unwelcome metabolizers. But what if we see other species as potentials? In this talk, I present an ongoing project at Medical Museion in Copenhagen – The Living Room – where we collaborate across conservation science, artistic practice and humanities research to cultivate other lifecycles of objects and organisms at the museum. We develop practices of caring beyond saving, by deliberately reawakening collections from their metabolic slumber. In our practice, mushrooms have played crucial planned and serendipitous roles, shaping our exhibition and research with us. Drawing on our transdisciplinary and multi-species collaborations, I will discuss how mushrooms have kept our artistic process open reshaping it in uncontrollable and uncertain ways and showing us how decomposition does not necessarily entail loss.