I'm starting to go through paper memorabilia...

Discussion in 'Chatty Pad' started by QuiltyMom, Nov 5, 2019.

  1. QuiltyMom

    QuiltyMom I'll never run out of things to do!

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    ... and I'm running into a sentimentality problem. How long would you save graduation and wedding announcements, birthday cards and programs for events you were involved in? I tend to keep everything and I really, seriously need to purge the paper!!

    (Maybe I'm also seeking permission to toss? Who knows!)
     
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  2. jesskab

    jesskab Watch me sizzle & twizzle

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    Oh, I know how you feel. I have printed pages in the past & added a pocket to the book for special things. I have years & years of dance recital programs that I don't know what I'll ever do with. I have no advice, just empathy. :heartlub
     
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  3. HeatherB

    HeatherB Ain't nothin wrong with a few dust bunnies!

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    I'm no help. My parents just gave me a copy of my birth announcement that was in the local newspaper and I promptly added it to my memory box. I can't even get rid of birthday cards and Christmas cards!
     
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  4. Memaw2Wm

    Memaw2Wm Well-Known Member

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    Forever ... a couple of years ago I tossed a bunch of wallet-sized photos of my friends' kids from the late 70s/early 80s... those kids are now adults, parents and one is a grandmother ... making my BFF a GREAT-grandmother (oh my!). I almost immediately regretted tossing them. My one rule is that I only keep ONE copy of announcements and programs.
     
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  5. janedee

    janedee Is a craft project ever really finished?

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    I used to keep all those things. Recently, we've decided its time to declutter, so I'm asking myself - what would happen to these things if we were gone. Would my kids want to keep them or are they just for me. If I don't think the kids would want them, they either get tossed out, a photo taken of them, or they get tucked into a pocket in a scrapbook. I don't want any more loose memorabilia floating around. I'd like to keep it with the appropriate yearly album or a heritage album.
     
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  6. Tree City

    Tree City Get a stepladder, I'm busy

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    I don't keep cards/invites. I enjoy it when it comes, and then it's gone. Holiday cards get put on our kitchen door until Jan 01...then they're gone. I do cut our family's photos out from photo holiday cards and I put them with my 4x6 printed photos. But invites, thank-yous, etc? Nope.

    Honest question: you're thinking about getting rid of them, but why keep them? Is there sentimental value? If you really are looking for permission to toss...
    [​IMG]

    ETA: oops, forgot to mention I take photos of programs before the show/concert/whatever starts. That way I have a digital copy, and it looks like a cute "Where I Sit" photo. :)
     
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2019
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  7. patsyt

    patsyt Loop-de-loops? Not a fan!

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    I also had tons of items that I've collected over the years. I've been doing a LOT of scanning! The thing that makes me hesitate about getting rid of certain things is that as I have been researching my genealogy I gleaned a lot of information from the obituaries and newspaper articles that my mom saved through the years. Those obituaries are now mine and are scanned with the originals being tossed. Some of the paper items from my mother and mother-in-law were just too musty smelling to keep the originals.
     
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  8. Dalis

    Dalis Jose Cuervo is NOT a good friend

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    How about scanning or simply taking a picture of it and scrapping it? I don't keep paperwork, I feel terrible for a second when I toss it and then I forget about it.
     
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  9. IntenseMagic

    IntenseMagic Some grannies cuss a lot. I'm some grannies.

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    I used to keep all the cards, but I've gotten much better about getting rid of them. I just wanted something with my mom and dad's writing on it to keep, and I finally figured out that most every single card said pretty much the same thing, so keeping one or two would work. Some I've taken pictures of, some I've just tossed.
     
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  10. gonewiththewind

    gonewiththewind I choose joy.

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    If it's close family, I will keep wedding invitations, baby announcements, etc. I have smash books that I just plop them all in. It's neat to look back over them and go, oh yeah, I remember that! LOL

    I have done as others have suggested as well . . . taken photos of programs so that I don't have to keep the paper, but still have part of the memory of what I was there for . . . LOL
     
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  11. bestcee

    bestcee In love with places I've never been to

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    This! What I did for me was: New birthday card comes, old one gets photo taken and tossed. And then, I had a realization:
    I really only want to see their writing. And I'm okay with that being digital. So, now, I enjoy the card for the month, and toss is. I'll often take a photo/scan of the message but that's it.
    Wedding invites get a photo and I add it to the page I do about the wedding. After the wedding, I toss the paper invite.

    The TL;DR:
    Last summer I scanned a bunch of stuff for my mother in law. As the memory keeper, it'll end up coming to me when she dies. So, I'd ask DH "who's this?" with wedding invites and such. And his response was usually "I don't know". Then, I was scanning in my baby book my mom made for me. She saved all the cards that anyone sent for me as a kid. And while it was cute to look through, I really only cared about the writing. And even then, I didn't want the whole card hanging around. So, scan and toss! And that made me rethink all the paper stuff I keep and whether I really want it or not. Because unless I add the context for my kid, he isn't going to care about that card someone sent for my birthday. He might if he reads about how much it meant that I received it from x and a photo of them. Because then it has a little more meaning and context.
     
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  12. HavaDrPepper

    HavaDrPepper Space. The final frontier

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    Just went through this process these last 18 months. And, much of it wasn't even mine... it was my parents'. I had sympathy cards from when my mom's mother died... in 1971 and when her dad died in 1995. Dad had added the sympathy cards for mom in 1996 to that pile as well. I glanced through them and in the end, I only ended up doing anything with one of them. It was to Dad and I from an old girlfriend of Dad's... Neil Armstrong's sister. I scanned it then recycled it with the rest of them.

    I found letters Grandpa wrote to Mom from FL after Grandma died. I found letters Mom wrote to me from FL in the early 90's. Those I kept and plan to scan when I'm ready to scrap them. Mom had also kept items from when she was in junior high school. I scanned then pitched (did learn a couple things about her that I never knew!) There were items from her teaching career (bulletin board stuff) in the basement and she retired 10 years before she died. Some of it pertained to the moon landing/walk so I either scanned or took pictures of it then out the door it went.

    I had scrapbooks I had made of newspaper clippings in the 70's/80's. I took photos of some things that were interesting to me, then pitched them. I ran across other things that brought back memories or I had a good laugh about. Again, if it meant something or had information that could be used in scrapping, I either scanned it or took a photo. Heck, some things, I typed up on the computer so that I have a digital copy. Didn't need the whole magazine and since I was getting rid of paper, no need to tear the pages out and not know what to do with them.

    In the end, I got rid of 95% of it because nobody will really care about it when I'm gone.
     
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  13. michelepixels

    michelepixels A pun is not fully matured until it is full groan.

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    I've been photographing and scanning a lot of paper stuff in the last few years instead of keeping them! It's so freeing. And I haven't missed anything.

    It helps to have a good organization system to store and backup the digital files. And I have been putting a lot of the images into my Day One (digital) journal too.
     
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  14. Karen

    Karen Wiggle it, just a little bit!

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    I always scan programs and then put them in the folder with the photos of that event so they are easy to find. I don't keep birthday cards or thank yous either. I just don't have the space to store them and I'd probably never go back and look at them again anyway. The only things I've kept are the post cards that my sister and her family send our family whenever they go on vacation. It's like taking a vacation without leaving my house. :giggle I also did keep a couple of graduation cards from high school that are fun.

    I also scan my kids artwork and store that in a folder at the end of each school year along with a scan of their school pictures and awards. I'm much more likely to actually look at that stuff digitally than I would be if it were stuffed in a file folder somewhere.
     
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  15. cookingmylife

    cookingmylife Pizza would be my last meal, except ...

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    I would have also once said that was true... but now my 52 year old son and my almost 50 niece are doing family genealogy and really do want those old items because they are tactile things from MY grandparents era - items dating from the mid to late 1800s. Knowing that x is something X actually held is not the same for them as a scan. I am getting rid of many things but some of these old albums - like MY childhood cards in an album my mother made - and the album I made from my 1st wedding - well...The latter reminds my children that their father and I WERE in love even if it didn't last. Eventually I'll be gone and then they can make some of these decisions.

    Cards people now give me or us....they get trashed.
     
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  16. HavaDrPepper

    HavaDrPepper Space. The final frontier

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    @cookingmylife

    I don't have any children and never will. As far as the boat load of paper items, very little of it was worth keeping. Scanning or taking photos of things that were falling apart is how they were preserved.

    The few non paper things that I found that I knew someone would want were actually given to them already. Pretty much I was doing the cleanout of my house so that my cousins don't have to deal with all of it when I'm gone. Because I'm sure it would be trashed by them without even looking at it. Some physical items were actually in rather bad condition so they weren't even worth keeping. Luckily I had taken photos and scrapped about them a few years back.
     
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  17. QuiltyMom

    QuiltyMom I'll never run out of things to do!

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    THIS. I have cards given to me as a baby that were signed by relatives who are long gone. There's something about holding an item that makes a connection with me, especially signatures. I will scan them, but I want the physical copy, too.

    I used Day One when it first came out, but it quickly ate up all my dropbox space. Maybe I'll have to look into it again.
     
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  18. QuiltyMom

    QuiltyMom I'll never run out of things to do!

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    This reminds me of a funny story. When my kids were in elementary school one of the parents gave a presentation on how she saved her kid's school/art work. She had a plastic file box for each one with a different hanging file folder for each subject. The plan was to save EVERYTHING. It was impressive, but wow.

    Fast forward to middle school. I ran into this same parent at an orchestra event and we started talking about things. She brought up that talk and she admitted there was so much stuff saved after just one year that she said to herself, what was I thinking? Am I nuts? So she picked one thing from each subject to save, took photos of the artwork and tossed the rest. We had a good laugh over it, that's for sure!
     
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  19. QuiltyMom

    QuiltyMom I'll never run out of things to do!

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    Exactly my thought. Everything would get tossed into a dumpster. That's why I'm (unsuccessfully!) trying to do all this now. My sister's thought is for the family heritage stuff is to get the written stories, find any corresponding photos, get some representative photos of each person, then that's it. According to her, we don't need 50 photos of one person, but just enough to tell that person's story. I'm trying to do that, but it's incredibly hard to do!
     
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  20. AJK

    AJK I plead the 5th ...

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    I am probably the worst one to respond to this as I have lost ALL my paper scrapbooks which included each child's memories birth thru high school, our wedding, heritage, ministry, and family vacation stuff. All of it is gone.My plan was to copy it and give the kids each their own original scrapbook. [I was going to print the heritage and ministry ones via Shutterfly.] Add to that the lightning strike which wiped out the digital versions of the above. Keep it all, if you can. But organize it so it is easily viewed!
     
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