View Full Version : i commited an unforgivable heresy today
at least in my mothers eyes.
i decluttered my photogrpahs and family ephemera.
i had one thing that was a post card and it was from some family member congratulating my great grandfather on the birth of his daughter.
well she is still alive so i asked my mom for her address cause i wanted to give it to her. i got lit into about if i dont want the stuff then i can pack it all up and send it to her, and she will keep it since i dont want it.
i was just trying to do something nice for my 93 year old great aunt. i never do nice stuff. maybe this is why. i get yelled at. so i just shredded the whole box of stuff.
i told her that i just boxed it all back up and she was happy again.
i dont think that she understands that when she dies all her stuff is going to be thrown into a roll off. she must think im joking when i tell her that.
flowerseverywhere
3-17-15, 7:07pm
I am sorry you could not find someone who wanted the family keepsakes. I do agree so much though about what you are saying. My mother in law, packrat supreme, was horrified when her neighbor across the street died and her kids got a big dumpster and literally threw stuff out the windows into it. if we had fewer possessions we would value them more
dont get me wrong it was a selected cleansing. kept the good stuff. birth/death certificates, army discharges, death memorials, etc. (quality not quantity)
for some reason there were ads for estate sales saved, receipts, cancelled checks from the early 20th century.
basically stuff that we'd shred and recycle today.
junk mail is junk mail, 1915 or 2015.
I ran across a shopping list written by my great-grandmother in the Oregon State Archives--and was thrilled. It's a shame we don't have a repositories for these little treasures everywhere. Or maybe we do, and I just don't know about it. The most insignificant scraps from the past are often the most poignant and meaningful.
I would add that we should all make several photocopies of all important pictures, documents, and records and distribute them to historical societies, our relatives, time capsules, so that some day our distant relatives can delight in their discovery. And maybe even a shopping list or two...That's what I've learned from genealogy.
Funny, I feel both ways about it. I do love coming across oddments, but I HATE having stuff around. Just went through a day of modern archeological digging in the 2' mountain which disguises the dresser as a papier mache project, and while there were about five memories buried in it, the rest of it was just an infuriating s**t heap of receipts, sales fliers and good news from the Jehovah's Witnesses who regularly paper our house. Even the "personal" stuff was mostly things like hastily signed Christmas cards that should have been thrown out months ago.
I would add that we should all make several photocopies of all important pictures, documents, and records and distribute them to historical societies, our relatives, time capsules, so that some day our distant relatives can delight in their discovery. And maybe even a shopping list or two...That's what I've learned from genealogy.
i did find one letter from a relative in indiana to my great grandmother in 1913.
they are old german baptists and the elders were having a meeting because of the automobile problem. lol
a 100 years later and the same ones are having a problem with the internet.
Gardenarian
3-19-15, 2:14am
I struggle with this...what we think of as ephemera often become the most interesting relics of our lives.
Yes, the grocery lists, the 'bad' photos, the postcards, the garden club news...but we can't keep it all.
Chicken lady
3-19-15, 6:42am
I think it's the rarity of the ephemera that make them interesting. If you had all of your great grandmother's shopping lists, they'd be annoying.
When my Grandmother died two years ago, one of the things she left behind was boxes of letters between my grandparents from when they starting courting to his army service, travelling salesman days, etc. She read them all. Apparently they were mostly boring and they argued a lot (not really fighting, just arguing - no surprise there!) and my uncle got all the air time.
I have my grandmother's hope chest. Mom saved the one letter from before they were married when my grandmother wrote to my grandfather about getting the hope chest for Christmas so I can have it, and gave the rest to my uncle.
i get it, i took all the older photos one year and scanned them in on CD's for my siblings and i. we didn't have too many really but my mom kept on not doing the project. She has sooo many photos and it is nice when she selectively gives us some but hard when we get too many.
on her most recent trip she brought a lot of things including some old aprons with funny saying from my childhood, i know it is hard to just leave these at goodwill and now i am not sure what to do with them. i have a perfect apron, one is going to a friend who is re-starting her home after a divorce, the other i may give to one of my children.
i have been very grateful that i do not need to deal with my ex-fil and his stuff. one year at the holidays he got out his mothers trunk, she died when he was 19 so it had not been opened in about 30 years at that time. we took everything out, looked at it, and put all of it back in. including the long underwear she had been in the middle of mending and photos of people that could not be identified and a random broken fork type thing. i had nightmares thinking about going through their things when he passed, but now it is not my problem. good luck to my ex.
Chicken lady
3-19-15, 10:07am
Zoe Girl, I don't know if you read my stuff in the hoarding thread, but my family is really bad. My uncle is the worst and when they cleaned out my grandmother's house, so much went home with him it was frightening. He has retired and he owns the building his office was in. instead of adding his office to the rentals, he is now using it to store things he wants to hide from my aunt.
My cousin is an only child, and when we were there trying to help our parents with Gram's house, she watched my Uncle "rescue" a box of junk and she grabbed my arm with this look of horror in her eyes and hissed "You're coming to help me when they die right? I can't do this. I'm an only child!"
ToomuchStuff
3-19-15, 3:53pm
Sometimes a match is a good thing.
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