Overcoming sentimental attachment to parent's old books

[pinkytoe]

I am making the effort to do Swedish death cleaning of possessions. I still have a box or two of old books that belonged to my parents that for some reason I have held on to. Examples - old Singer sewing books, old English poetry books, Gone with the Wind, 1936 edition and other novels of the 1930s-40s. I have no use for them but....how does one get past this queasy feeling of letting them go?

[catherine]

Don't let them go. Just a box or two of old books that prompt you to remember your parents? Big deal. Not enough of a burden to stress over.

When we went through The Purge, there were certain things that I felt the same way about. I would say to DH, "I'm not emotionally ready to get rid of this yet." And he would accept it, and so did I.

You can always change your mind at a later date.

[Tybee]

One thing I did a few years after my dad died was to divide up the books he had as a kid and send them to grandchildren in the family, so each got about five books or so. I think I kept one. I rebound his old Bible that he kept next to his bed all his life--the cover was falling off, and they did a beautiful job, and I went from black cover to green, for eternal life--he would have liked that. I kept his bookmark, which was a receipt from the hardware store.

But I do have a lot of books so it's not that big a deal to keep a few more. But a lot of them I passed on to younger family members. It did grieve me to lose his whole library, which did happen when my brother called in estate sale people.

[early morning]

Tybee, I smiled at your dad's bookmark that you held onto. I have a "laundry stick" - a piece of wood my dad smoothed down for my mom to use to poke laundry down under the water in her old washing machine. He made it when they went to housekeeping in 1940. It's just a well watered piece of wood, but it's so - her.

I am making the effort to do Swedish death cleaning of possessions

to each his own, I guess, but I don't get the whole death cleaning thing. My sibs and I wanted to go through my parents stuff. It was a family adventure/revisit of the past. My kids were involved. I'd have liked to have more time to do it, and it did create a mess as we all took way too much stuff to our own houses when we sold Mom's (which went faster than anticipated, so...). It was part of our grieving process. If mom had cast it all out ahead of time, I think I'd still be fairly bitter. It was our childhood, her and dad's life - and it was important. Since Mom's passing, we've gone through and let go much more of her stuff - but even moving it on, handling it, discussing it, brings back lovely memories. I'm pretty tactile. Things used are much more evocative of the past to me than photos are. I know lots of people don't agree, and that's fine. But me? Oh, yeah, keep the books.

[pinkytoe]

I grew up in a somewhat dysfunctional situation so not too many warm, fuzzies for my parents. DD has no interest in these things so in my case, it makes sense to at least try to deal with these things.

[early morning]

Sure! Many people, many different situations! I don't do facebook or anything like that, but a friend of mine found great comfort in finding someone in her neighborhood facebook group who was thrilled to receive her mother's old books and some linens. Stories shared, items passed on, everyone happy. Getting them to someone who will really appreciated them might get you past your queasy feeling?

[iris lilies]

I grew up in a somewhat dysfunctional situation so not too many warm, fuzzies for my parents. DD has no interest in these things so in my case, it makes sense to at least try to deal with these things.

Thank you for doing this for your daughter.

[Rogar]

I have trouble getting rid of certain family items. It might be my greatest weakness in decluttering. My suggestion for books would be to get rid of all but a favorite or two per relative. If you will re-read some of them at a later date or if they are part of you decor then why not keep them. If they are just hiding in a box in a closet, the sentimental value might be overcome by donating or selling them to someone who would appreciate owning them.

[rosarugosa]

I have trouble getting rid of certain family items. It might be my greatest weakness in decluttering. My suggestion for books would be to get rid of all but a favorite or two per relative. If you will re-read some of them at a later date or if they are part of you decor then why not keep them. If they are just hiding in a box in a closet, the sentimental value might be overcome by donating or selling them to someone who would appreciate owning them.

That's been my strategy. My MIL sent me a few of my FIL's E.B. White books after he died. She must have remembered that he and I shared a love for E.B. White in particular, and for books in general, so they have sentimental meaning to me. I had a really good relationship with my in-laws.

[iris lilies]

on another thread, I mentioned weeding the collection of 33 1/3 RPM record albums at our large public library. We had a thousand. We were getting ready to renovate the 1912 building from top to bottom and everything in the collection had to be moved out and stored temporarily elsewhere, but collections were coming back into the renovated building had to be reduced by 2/3. So we had to weed like crazy. One of the problems is that the subject specialist who were ultimately in charge of areas of the stacks were loath to get rid of anything. Oh my I have so many stories about reluctance to weed. So many. Y’all would have a hard time dealing with the thousands upon thousands of books that went through my department as discards every year and especially those part of this big project.

One collection I remember specifically. It seemed like god parted the heavens and showed us an opportunity, and subject librarians were unable to act.

It started when the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York asked us to lend 2 volumes thru Interlibrary Loan. I mean, this is the premier glass library in the United States. Our collection had rare and unique items. So I asked the Corning people if they wanted the entire run, not just the few volumes they asked for and they fell all over themselves saying sure we want them!


So I suggested to our library subject specialist we donate these volumes to the prestigious Corning library but our library person was unable to make a decision for months on end. It was so obvious what the outcome should be . But he wouldn’t make a decision. Very frustrating. Finally he let them go but it wasn’t until the weeding deadline had been reached.

there was another huge collection that took up a lot of space that was stored in my department on special shelves built for them in the year 1912. They were the library “accession books “where every book purchased for the collection was recorded in a ledger with the price, the publisher, title, author, vendor source, and any withdrawal status. These were in giant ledger books the size of Elephant folios.

It was very cool data but impossible to store and I certainly didn’t want it in my department in the new building. I wanted them all gone, except, perhaps, for the very first ledger book and that could be stored as part of library archives.


Well, I had to wrangle quite a few subject specialists who were convinced I really did want them, along with a huge collection of National Union Catalog that took up many feet of storage space. I was unable to convince the subject specialist for a long time that my department had absolutely no use for these huge volumes. They couldn’t grok it.

if you’ve worked in a library that has a complete set of the National Union Catalog, you are a dinosaur.

here it is taking up acres of library shelving

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