Beyond Fiction

Well, I thought I would pop in and write a quick blog about what is happening in my life right now. Yes, it is genealogy related.

I’ve been very busy lately with trying to get things together at my mother-in-law’s house. We have had to put her in a retirement center due to the fact that she can no longer take care of herself and we can’t do it either. Don’t worry, it’s a nice place.

Anyways, the reason I am writing is to share life lessons I am learning while doing all this. Last night, in the course of trying to pack things up at her apartment, I learned some new things. The first lesson was one that I learned from reading other blogs and thank God I did. My wife opened a box, flipped through it and thought it was just a bunch of trash. She told my daughter to take it to the dumpster but I said to wait. Upon searching through the box, most of it was trash. However, there were a couple of important items thrown in there. There were several nice pictures, a couple of funeral memorials, some old newspaper clippings and several other things that my wife was glad to see saved! Just think how close we came to losing all that! My thanks go out to all those who shared their wisdom on their blogs.

The other thing I wanted to write about is that what I noticed while going through my mother-in-laws things were that she had no idea what she was storing or probably even where it was stored. Every box had a mix of stuffed animals, old letters, scrap paper and other assorted items thrown in with birth certificates, divorce papers, pictures and other items you would want to keep. We have our work cut out for us because of this. My suggestion would be to develop some sort of system for you and your family and perhaps even for your parents to use while they are still around. It will help to avoid the potential for mistaking a box of mixed papers for trash!

Lastly, just as an aside, if you smoke then I have something to share with you. You may not realize it but the smoke and such filters into your boxes and will leave ugly yellow stains on papers, pictures and even white appliances. It also leaves a very bad smell. I’m not telling anyone how to live but if you do smoke you may want to put important keepsakes in airtight containers or such. It’s sad to see a very old and treasured picture damaged due to yellow tinging from cigarette smoke!

Just a few tips from lessons I have learned in the past week!