Melissa Joan Hart Reveals the Story Behind the Weird Prop She Took from the Sabrina Set: 'A Piece of My Face' (Exclusive)

Twenty years after the last episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch aired, Melissa Joan Hart is still holding on to a few things from her time on the beloved series. 

“I do have some candlestick holders,” she tells PEOPLE. “In my pantry, I have some Italian pottery things that hung on the wall.”

But there is one memento that tops the rest.

“I have a piece of my face from the episode where I fell apart, which I think was called 'Falling to Pieces' or something about pieces of Sabrina,” she recalls, likely referencing the season 6 finale episode entitled “I Fall to Pieces,” which ends in Sabrina being turned to stone and crumbling. 

Also included in her collection is a piece from the first episode she ever directed: a propeller from an airplane. 

“It was supposed to break off in the scene, and the whole crew signed it for me,” she says, sharing that it now sits on a bookshelf displayed on its side. 

Hart, 48, says that while she knows fans “felt so at home with Sabrina,” as far as her own experience, she struggled to relate to the role. 

“Not only was she younger than me, she didn't want attention,” Hart explains, noting that she was 20 but playing a teenager at the time. “She wanted to be the wallflower. She didn't know what to do with these magical abilities. She felt very lost, and other people were trying to help her solve it” 

She added: “If she wasn't always in different costumes and kind of getting put in these weird situations where I got to be Cinderella or Alice Wonderland or a trapeze artist or in Cirque du Soleil or whatever I don't know if I would've enjoyed the experience as much as I did because I just didn't identify with her very well.”

By comparison, when she looks back at her role as the titular character on Clarissa Explains It All, which ran from 1991 to 1994 on Nickelodeon, Hart says she was growing up off camera just as her character was growing up in front of it. 

“Being on Clarissa gave me that freedom to sort of figure out who I was while she's figuring out who she is,” she says of starting on the show when she was 15. “So it's really a blurred line between me and Clarissa — we were the exact same age.”

While she spent much of her early career entertaining audiences of kids, Hart is now a mother to three boys of her own, whom she shares with husband of 20 years, Mark Wilkerson. Leading up to Mother’s Day, Hart tells PEOPLE that she has three things on her wish list: “If they go out and plant me six hydrangeas, I get to have a little food and they're just nice to me, I'll be happy."

When she’s not busy working on new projects or parenting her sons, Hart has given her time and money to World Vision — an organization that helps those living in poverty. Through her work, Hart has sponsored three children in Zambia, efforts that for her “felt like a natural fit.”

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“I'm the oldest of eight kids, so I've always felt a certain responsibility towards a younger generation of people looking up to you,” she says. “And then being a mom is similar in a way to me and my relationship with my sisters and my brother. But I've always just sort of felt like we have a responsibility to take care of others.”