"Nobody else will want them let's face it."
I happen to vehemently disagree with this statement made by a friend yesterday when we were discussing recording our memories. She has cleared the decks at her house so there will be no "rubbish" left for her children to deal with when she leaves this mortal earth.
I was telling her that I was finally going through and tossing 35 years worth of tickets, pamphlets and programs from 35 years of overseas travel..... BUT before I tossed them I scanned all that could be scanned. I am going to put all of those digital images on my hard drive in the photo folders to which they relate. I'm sure some of the kids will enjoy them. Of course I have saved hard copies of some important documents like the luncheon menu from when I dined in The Strangers' Dining Room at the House of Commons in London.
I have a bad case of Hoarditis and find it difficult to part with ephemera but I just don't have the physical space to store it all.
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Although I have transcribed all of the entries in them into my online diary I still have a collection of my old physical diaries. Today I took a giant leap forward and tossed out all my old work diaries (I have been retired for nearly 7 years). I don't think I'll be quite brave enough to part with personal diaries ....just yet.
Maybe nobody else will want them but I'm giving my descendants the option of saying Yes or No.
Will you leave plenty of memories behind?
5 comments:
Jill, before tossing your scanned ephemera, do a quick check on eBay, as there are many collectors of vintage tickets, programs and other ephemera. You just might own a few valuable items in your collection! :)
To answer your question "Yes - I will leave memories behind". I now regret so much throwing out a lot of my childhood/teenage stuff just prior to my marriage - a new stage of my life etc and we were moving into a small flat. So out went my favourite childhood books that I had kept for a long time, school reports, teenage diaries and two scrolled photographs taken of the whole school - the only ones I had of that period in my life. Forty years on, we moved again, and it was time for another de-cluttering - mainly of ornaments and examples of my mother's craftwork. But at least I could photograph them and still have a record. I have a big memory box in the loft with drawings etc from my daughter's childhood - and now of my little granddaughter, and did retain programmes of concerts I have been involved in over the years, newsletters/annual reports from my work and newspaper articles I have written. The big question is what will my daughter do with them when the time comes! I have little in the way of photographs and memorabilia relating to my father's early life which is so sad. I did not think of writing down my own memories of growing up until I joined Geneabloggers and responded tho their various prompts which I have now compiled in "I remember when........". Yes - memories are important!
Susan has wise words there! I admit in the recent move I eventually became more ruthless and tossed my work diaries. Still lots of fodder for my hoarditis in the memory boxes though. Will they survive my passing off this mortal coil? I don't know. Now we all own so much stuff it devalues the inheritance I think whereas in decades/centuries past, most ordinary people had fewer belongings and so anything that was inherited was more likely to be treasured.
Jill, My mother kept diaries for years (over 20 years at least). When she passed away in 1996, my sister wanted to throw them all away, but I wouldn't let her. Now they are coming in very handy for my family history blog - and I even used them in an article I wrote for my work's bi-monthly magazine (she was a union rep, so had lots of interesting issues she had to deal with).
Thanks all for your thoughts on this. From the interest even the older grandchildren show in my blog posts I'm sure someone will get a get a giggle from things I have recorded.
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