Pandemic De-Cluttering and a Heirloom Book

How many of you have used this time to de-clutter? I raise my hand. It has been an excellent time to pull everything out of a closet and put half of it back. It can take several days, but who is going to see the mess on the floor? First, out went all my old hobbies, sewing, cross-stitching supplies, my eyes will not allow me to return to. Luckily our town has a sewing club for at-risk girls that was thrilled to have these items.

Next, old papers, letters, and diaries! I saved the best, but let’s just say my family is not going to be reading my diaries during my crazy college days. Or break-up letters from old flames, I barely remember.

And yes, some great discoveries were saved. All our wedding planning notes from over 40 years ago. Costs, our vows, invitations, lists of invitees. A letter I had written to my sister about my husband’s and my first date. While 75% was thrown away, the remaining 25% are treasures to enjoy. Instead of a box, they are filed, easy to identify and locate.

Next was china and silver. Over the years, I’ve been given several sets of each. Thankfully, my daughters eagerly agreed to split my grandmother’s, the most sentimental of the sets. She’d brought with her when she immigrated in 1949. One daughter took the plates, the other took the larger pieces for serving. So thankful. For the other china and silver, I used replacements.com  that gives you a reasonable compensation for older place settings via a contract. All you do is carefully pack and mail.

As we enter week 8 of the Illinois stay-at-home orders, we were pretty cleaned out, but I had one more project in mind. We still have a larger home, with many sentimental items from our parents and grandparents that we enjoy. But what will happen to these when we down-size or are not around to tell the stories. Heirlooms without stories are just stuff. Right? I created a book.

First, I took photos of the most sentimental of items. I labeled them by general descriptions to make photo organization easier: furniture, small items, jewelry. I also grouped small items together in a few photos. Then using Shutterfly, I created a photo book with a simple description in the caption.

Shutterfly is very user friendly, and it did not take long to do. I uploaded the file of photos, which were already in order, at one time. Using the custom book option, I selected the size and style of book (8x8 modern gray) and with a press of one button, all of the photos were added to the book in order. I made a few changes, added the captions and in one night had it almost finished. Looking it over in the morning, I made a few additions and subtractions and it was ready to publish.

 Shutterfly is more for photos than story telling. A few items had a longer story than what I could write using the captions. So I also created a word document, describing the bigger story on some of our more treasured items. I referred to the document in the book, so they know to look for it. The document can be updated as I give things away or add something I didn’t photo. Not everything was photoed. My kids know what my husband’s Lionel train looks like, but I described it in the document.

I plan to give each child a book and one to keep with our will. The bonus is that if we ever do downsize, we’ll have a photobook of our most sentimental items to enjoy. What de-cluttering ideas do you have while we all wait at home? I’d love to hear.