General Chat

to clear out a cupboard!

The intention was good, to pull out the boxes of pictures which can't be hung as they are too heavy for the plasterboard and to go through the suitcase to see what what is in..... 2 hours later with the lounge piled with paper, I have ground to a halt. The essays from college were interesting ( Civil Rights, Hamlet, "How twisted was the road to Auschwitz" etc) so will be kept,school reports ditto and odds and ends which fit loosely under the banner of family history.

BUT what to do about all the cards? 50 years of birthday/Christmas/ Easter cards from mum,to mum, from brother.... keep? don't keep?

Rather wish I hadn't started now lol.

I scanned them all using an office scanner with a document input attachment, physically kept about 10%. Then put the scans somewhere in the cloud such as DropBox and you are disaster proof at least until the next solar flare.

I have a scanner Rollo so sounds like the best option and to just keep a few of the oldest, in case as son just said, I want to look through them in my old age ;-)

Rose
I did the same with my boxes but just ended up a buying another box for future cards. :-D :-D :-D

Von I fear that could so easily be the case lol, already I am dithering over things I'd put on the 'throw' pile :-|

I had a clear-out of personal things once I reached 70.

The letters that passed between OH and me were destroyed because they were personal and I thought they should not be left to children to destroy. We kept our 21st cards and wedding ones but other birthday, Mothers' and Fathers' Day and Christmas Day cards from children and grandchildren were ditched. We did keep programmes from grandchildren's sports and Christmas plays. We passed to our children their own school reports etc.

We decided that in future we would keep only the last birthdays, Mothers' Day, Fathers' Day and Christmas Cards from each other and from children and grandchildren. We kept the last cards and letters our parents wrote to us before they died.

I could not destroy the photos but decided to write on the back of each, the names of the people shown on them. I am still in the middle of that task. The decision to do this was because I have several inherited family photos stretching back to the late 1800s of relatives and only a couple of these have names on the reverse. I have identified only two of them with another two possibilities. I would urge everyone to do this because it is frustrating to see family likeness in photos but not know who the individuals are.

Funnily enough, we kept mortgage, land and company documents from years ago - it's the legal thing innit! :-D

When gran went into a home we cleared out her house.
I found letters between my gran and grandad - but I didn't look at them until she died, about 7 years later.
I found birthday/Christmas cards from my g g grandparents to gran :-S
Which I still have.
I also have the undertaker's receipts from grandad's first wife's funeral and grandad's funeral, and grandad's various insurance premiums.

When mum died, I ended up with 8 boxes of genealogy stuff, and about 30 huge photo albums, mainly of her life in Portugal - but interspersed with family photos.
I weeded down the genealogy stuff - getting rid of all the genealogical books from Hampshire, Suffolk, Buckinghamshire and the Isle of Wight Genealogical Societies was a relief!. Six photo albums are still under my bed - one day.....

We don't have any letters from either of us stored, we do have birthday, engagement, wedding and birth cards though, in scrap books not loose. I do have one letter from my dad to my Mum, and I treasure that, love the fact he calls her 'Dear girl', so thirties!! I also have a letter from Mum's Mum to my Dad when they went to malta after marriage, telling him to look after her baby. (Mum was the youngest of 8 living).

I have got rid of loads of my own photo albums but there are still a lot left, photos are all named. I have several albums of my Dads, some named some not.I actually have a trunk full of 'things to keep'.'. I guess i should weed that a bit as well.

It ended up as rather depressing really, I came across an old letter which I thought was long gone, from a lost love ( also long gone lol) and it was like it was yesterday.
I gave up after that but there is another suitcase to tackle today. There is a big bag of papers to be shredded though and the recycling bag is half full of card and paper :-)

We had to downsize when my husband retired, so a clear out was absolutely necessary. I was very brave and chucked out loads of old cards and things. My reasoning was........'why on earth would the kids be interested in this lot?' I also work on the premiss that I want to make things easier for them when I leave this mortal coil. Both thoughts worked and I haven't regretted it. :-D

I agree, Cynthia. I didn't want my kids to have the dilemma of what cards and letters to ditch but I hope they have fun sorting through old photos, some of which I pray may stir happy memories at a time when they may be at a low ebb. :-)

Oooh - I've found menus from when we came over from Malta on the SS Devonshire :-D
somewhere, I have coasters from the ship too.

I also have a badge from the Empire Windrush - and have found menus from the ship :-D

I expect mum and dad gave them to gran, who kept them, then mum 'boxed' them.
I feel a display box or two coming on.......

We have a rule in this house
Nobody is to open a cupboard or a draw

Without wearing a hard hat and steel toe workie boots ;-) ;-) ;-)