If you come over to my house, don’t go into the lower level. I beg of you.
There’s a room down there that if you asked me what color it is, I’d ask you what color represents procrastination with a hint of overwhelmingness. While a game table stands at the ready in “that room” to serve up some fun, none of us can play. Why? Because there are plastic bins on nearly all four sides of the floor around the table. Those bins are filled and I mean filled with items from my late father’s senior living apartment.
The items are things none of his five daughters (I’m in that group!) had the heart to toss or donate or wanted take home. (The poor cabin has become the “Let’s just put it up there” space, but even that has its limits.) So here we are. The leftovers. Guess who is in charge of figuring out what to do with years of slides, a stamp collection (Some of the stamps are secured in books, but most are floating around loose.), high school yearbooks, newspaper clippings (Every good flood or natural disaster needs to be documented with yellowing newspaper clippings!), Life magazines and photos upon photos for both sides of our family? The answer: She’s pictured above this note.
It’s a lot. So much so that I don’t know where to start. I will—eventually—get it all done, and I hope I’ve made a great deal of progress by the time this issue runs. Am I the only one out there facing this dilemma? Of course not! If you’re in the same conundrum or know someone who is, learn more with our story How To Donate Family Artifacts to Lake Area Historical Groups. I reached out to some local historical societies to ask what those organizations take and don’t take when it comes to items with local ties. After learning about what they consider of value, I know I need to make a call to my hometown historical society. After all, it might need more details about the flood of 1978!
Happy sorting,
Renée Stewart-Hester
