Wednesday, January 4, 2023

It's been a year and a half since my last post

We downsized our home about 6 years ago when moving from Tennessee to Arkansas. The time has come to complete the job. I've designated one room per month on a schedule posted with a magnet to the side of my refrigerator as the declutter/downsize target!!! I think I'm already overwhelmed and it's January. I planned to do the office first. I'm thinking I should have started with something like the guest room which has nothing but linens in a dresser and a closet full of games to start this process!!! Sigh. I need to take my genealogist hat off and look at things with the following questions in mind: (1) Would anyone else really want or care about this; and (2) where am I going to keep it and why. When we downsized the first time I took those multiple shelves of white three ring notebooks with all the family surnames on the edge of the binder and scanned everything of importance in them. I have those in directories on my computer, backed up online and on external hard drives. That was a big job, and boy did it feel good to finish it! What I came across today was several small boxes of cards from funerals of my parents, grandmother, husband's grandmother and husband's great grandmother. The genealogist says "oooh, I need to figure out who all these people were who sent flowers and signed the visitation book"..... Do I really? I know the important dates involved with each of these people. I generally know the relatives who signed, but not all the friends ..... None of my children has taken up the family history/genealogy mantle...yet... Will they care? I don't believe these are something important to local genealogy societies..... getting rid of stuff is hard. I suppose I could make a spreadsheet with the names from the cards for each of the funerals involved and maybe scan in the signature pages of the funeral books. Maybe I'll sleep on it and decide tomorrow.......