Beyond Fiction

Well, I wrote not too long ago about getting serious about preserving what I have been trusted with, such as pictures. Today, I learned a few new things that I thought I would share with you. These tips are all from personal experience!

I like to save things that I think are worth saving. Of course, sometimes you have to make choices of what is worth saving and what is not. Well, today I thought I would go out to our storage shed and get some of the boxes that are stored out there and go through them. After all, photos and such don’t need to be stored in an outdoor storage shed, do they? Well, here is what I found today.

I have saved lots of greeting cards, mainly ones that my wife and I exchanged while dating and others for Valentines Day and such. Today, while going through one of five small boxes, I discovered that you have to be careful when storing these precious mementos. On several of the cards, the flap of the envelope was tucked into the envelope instead of leaving it outside. Since there is still glue on it and since it was in such a hot environment, those that were done this way are now not as nice as I would have liked. It’s not the same when the card has a big patch tore out of it! Those that were stored with the flap outside are still in good shape!

For those of you thinking it would be better just to store them without the envelope, think again. Those stored without the envelope had parts where they had curled and such due to the high humidity here in Texas. The ones in the envelope had actually kept their shape due to the help of the envelope.

There were other things I found. Wax candles my wife had saved from our son’s first birthday were melted! I know that is not something everyone saves but still, it might not have happened if I had stored everything where it was cooler! Some papers were discolored. One card had a note inside from a friend that had been written in a marker. The colors had all melted and faded so that you couldn’t read it anymore. Bibles had the pages curling up on them.

All in all, I came out good because a lot of the things I had were OK. However, several items were not salvageable and cannot be replaced! It’s my loss, but it is also my gain. I have gained some valuable insight to preservation techniques. You won’t catch me storing all my valuables outside in a hot storage shed.

I rue thinking of what I will find in the other boxes! Fortunately, we have no problems with rats or other rodents. That would have been even worse!

More later on this subject!