My wife and I are getting rid of a lot of stuff from our long life together as we downsize, but it’s also to spare our children from having to sort through too many of our items when that time comes. I could say it’s a bittersweet experience, or that I’m feeling sad, or even that I’m terrified by the implications. It certainly takes hours and hours and days and days – maybe it will be weeks – to go through everything, and looking over individual papers and photos turns out to be the most time-consuming exercise. Offering stuff for sale on Craigslist or NextDoor at less than 25 cents on the dollar, maybe even 10 cents on the dollar, and deciding what is best donated presents its own challenges. Some non-profits are more responsible, or discerning, than others as to who will end up with the items. I tend to think battered women shelters or outreach programs for homeless veterans are best.
Thanks, Abe. Your suggestions are good. I probably have 20 boxes of photos of family, especially after the first grandchild was born.
You are very concrete and I do use Iphone Google photos, so that's a good idea, too.
Nothing is ever easy.
Guy's parents were "neat," yet when he died (first, the FIL) we discovered they had saved tons of cardboard in rafters in their basement and it was all covered in mold. This is what I want to avoid.
But who will get my 1950s Donald Duck and LIttle Lulu comic books?
Problems of a very first world order.
I recommend James McBride, the writer...The Color of Water (memoir of a black man's Jewish mother), The Good Lord Bird (John Brown, fiction); and my favorite, Deacon King Kong -- growing up in the Red Hooks projects in Brooklyn, the black church, etc., again, a novel.
In the question about old photos, you can either scan the best onto a computer drive and copy to a DVD, which holds hundreds.
As we go through old photos, that’s what we have been doing. We can then watch them on the TV when we want to take a trip down memory lane. They can even be set to music as they play. ❤️😁
Ha! I don’t have a good answer! My view now is to pick a few dozen from the THOUSANDS we have and make an album for the children, to think like a professional photo editor at a magazine. We have thousands of old negatives but everything is digital now. They can be scanned onto a DVD but that gets expensive and DVDs are almost obsolete anyway. Keep the top 1-5 percent of photos? Taking iPhone pix of old photos is one idea, then you can name each image so that they’re searchable. Naming photos one be one will be time-consuming but May be worthwhile in the long run.
Thanks, Abe. Your suggestions are good. I probably have 20 boxes of photos of family, especially after the first grandchild was born.
You are very concrete and I do use Iphone Google photos, so that's a good idea, too.
Nothing is ever easy.
Guy's parents were "neat," yet when he died (first, the FIL) we discovered they had saved tons of cardboard in rafters in their basement and it was all covered in mold. This is what I want to avoid.
But who will get my 1950s Donald Duck and LIttle Lulu comic books?
Problems of a very first world order.
I recommend James McBride, the writer...The Color of Water (memoir of a black man's Jewish mother), The Good Lord Bird (John Brown, fiction); and my favorite, Deacon King Kong -- growing up in the Red Hooks projects in Brooklyn, the black church, etc., again, a novel.
In the question about old photos, you can either scan the best onto a computer drive and copy to a DVD, which holds hundreds.
As we go through old photos, that’s what we have been doing. We can then watch them on the TV when we want to take a trip down memory lane. They can even be set to music as they play. ❤️😁
A practical question: what do you do to organize old photos?
We are walking in step here. Baby boomers paring down, at least in my set.
Thanks for a good reflection/reminders.
Ha! I don’t have a good answer! My view now is to pick a few dozen from the THOUSANDS we have and make an album for the children, to think like a professional photo editor at a magazine. We have thousands of old negatives but everything is digital now. They can be scanned onto a DVD but that gets expensive and DVDs are almost obsolete anyway. Keep the top 1-5 percent of photos? Taking iPhone pix of old photos is one idea, then you can name each image so that they’re searchable. Naming photos one be one will be time-consuming but May be worthwhile in the long run.