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Saving Your Memories

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Fire! Part 1: Saving Your Memories
If your house were on fire, what material possessions would you try to save on the way out? Chances are family photos are at the top of your list. But honestly, in the middle of a house fire, will you be able to haul out all those boxes of photographs shoved in the back of your closet? Come to think of it, aren’t all those boxes of chemically treated paper some sort of fire hazard? What if you could get all those pictures organized and put into something small enough to carry easily? Better yet, what if you could take care of your Christmas shopping for next year and clean your closet all in one fell swoop? Well, you can!

For many of us, this task is one that we’ve procrastinated for years. That’s because it isn’t a simple matter of sorting and filing. These aren’t just pieces of paper with images printed on them. They represent your priceless memories! Understanding this is the first step to getting organized. Your goal is to preserve the quality of the memories while reducing the volume of photographs. Clear off the table and keep a trash bin handy. A few large envelopes will help the process, too. Now you’re ready to start organizing.

Dive right in. Pick up each photo. How is the quality? If the photographer’s finger blocks any part of the main subject, toss it in the trash. The same goes for duplicates or shots of things and events that never really mattered much to you. Also toss out nine of the ten nearly identical shots of you with that good–looking waiter at the bar in Puerto Vallarta. Get rid of them. One—the most flattering one, of course—is sufficient to preserve the memory.

Some photos will have more meaning for other people than they do for you. Put them in an envelope and mail them off to the person who will appreciate them most. You may want to start an envelope for each of your children, or for each of your siblings. They will appreciate your thoughtfulness, and you’ll be one step closer to getting a handle on those boxes.

Be quick about it. Don’t be sucked into the trap of reminiscing in this phase. If you need to, get a friend or hire an organizer or a personal historian to keep you on track. A standard sized document box filled with photographs shouldn’t take more than about 20 minutes for this initial sorting process. You may even get carried away and start pulling photos out of some of your old photo albums.  You know the albums I mean?the ones with the sticky pages that turn all brown and crusty. Your photographs are better off without those nasty albums. Toss the albums and keep the surviving photos.

Unless you’ve been super–organized all these years, your remaining photo stash should be about half the size of your original collection. After weeding out the give–aways and throw–aways, you’ll be left with a real treasure. Your treasure includes more than just photos, though. There are other meaningful mementos you want to preserve, too, like that half-filled WWII war bond stamp album and the blue ribbon you won at the state spelling bee. See parts two and three of this article to learn how you can make sure your photos and other mementos are saved properly so you and your family can continue to enjoy them for many years, come fire, flood, or other unforeseen disaster.
-Linda A. Smith

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Fire! Part 3: Other Mementos
If you are like me, you have saved more than just photographs over the years. There are wedding announcements, award certificates, trinkets from your travels, baby clothing, neckties, and locks of hair. They’re taking up space in your closet just like those photographs. Do you really need them? Probably not.

You may hold the illusion that after you die your loved ones will want all of your cherished mementos. That may be true for some things, but not all of them. Take stock of what you have. Which items have monetary value? Which have sentimental value? Items of pure sentiment are only worth the memories they represent. After you’re gone, those items will have no value at all unless you have preserved the story that goes with it. In fact, it is generally the story that has value, not the trinket.

Take time now to use your mementos for the purpose they were intended—to bring back memories. Small items can be mounted in a shadowbox, available at your local craft store. Sentimental clothing can be made into a memory quilt. If an item is worth keeping, it is worth putting on display.

Rather than just basking in nostalgia, take a photograph of each item and record it, along with the story of its significance, as part of your memoir book, CD, or DVD. Your record can double as proof of your possessions for insurance purposes in case of theft or disaster.

One woman I know decided that once she had recorded the stories, she no longer needed the items themselves, so she gave them to her loved ones while she was still in good health, thereby preventing potential disputes among her heirs about her will. She even gave away most of her beautiful antique furniture. Then, freed from the responsibility of caring for all that stuff, she sold her house and moved into a smaller residence, where she began the next rich phase of her life. She described the experience of clearing out her old things as one of release and renewal. Now she has less dusting to do, and more time for fun!
-Linda A. Smith

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Fire! Part 2: Photo Preservation
Now that you’ve identified the photos that hold the keys to your important memories, the next step is choosing a method to preserve them in an organized fashion.

One way to tackle this is by putting your photos and other small mementos into scrapbooks. Scrapbooking has become an entire industry. If you enjoy arts and crafts and have time and money to spend, this may be a terrific new hobby for you. Unfortunately, scrapbooks require storage space, just like your old boxes of photos. In fact, they may take up significantly more space than your original boxes. If downsizing is your goal, you will want to consider other options.

You can save and share your photos easily with digital archiving. If you don’t have the equipment to do this yourself at home, you can mail your photos to an online service and they will transfer your prints to .jpg format on CD or DVD. If you don’t want to put your precious photos in the mail to a faceless company somewhere on the other side of the country, your local print shop or a personal historian may be able to help. For those of you in the Eugene–Springfield area, Lasting Legacies offers an in–home service, which includes scanning the photos right in your home and correction of minor discoloration, scratches, and dust damage.

Consider having your favorites made into a DVD slideshow. This is another service Lasting Legacies offers to local customers along with in–home scanning of your photos. Your slideshow can be accompanied by a music soundtrack or by your own digitally recorded narration. A DVD slideshow can be viewed on a computer or a television, and makes a wonderful gift. Or, have some of your photos incorporated into a memory quilt. Now you have a clean closet, and a jumpstart on next year’s Christmas shopping!

My favorite way to preserve the memories, though, is with a memoir. With a memoir, you will preserve the most important part of your treasure—the memory that each photograph represents. Although a CD or a DVD will last many, many years, anyone who has lived more than two or three decades will wonder just how long it will take for any new form of media to become technologically obsolete. A book of your memoirs illustrated with photographs will never go out of style. It preserves not just your image, but also your voice, your personality, and those precious memories in more detail than is possible in any other way. As a personal historian, I can help you put together a book your family will treasure for generations to come.

You may be thinking I’ve forgotten about those other mementos—the blue ribbons and pocket watches. Never fear! I’ll tackle that subject in Part 3.
-Linda A. Smith

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