How to Use Your Time at Home to Save Your Family History – And at No Cost!
Image courtesy of TimeSorters
Tired of reading or doing puzzles?
Suffering from Zoom-fatigue?
Binged enough Tiger King?
Is Facebook showing you post “reruns”?
How about doing something with your time at home that will benefit you and those closest to you for decades to come? And it doesn’t cost a thing. In fact, it isn’t even hard to do and the feeling of satisfaction and the burden it will lift from you will be amazing!
The Mountain
Many of us look at those stacks and stacks of bags, boxes, bins, and albums that are full of family photos, old documents and mementos from trips and other life experiences, and feel totally deflated. There is so much of it and, much like all humungous tasks, it’s really tough to know where to even begin.
These mountains of memories also come with a huge sense of responsibility. After all, many of those items are irreplaceable and hold memories of important events that aren’t captured anywhere else. Most families have only one or two members who have, officially or unofficially, become the holders of those memories. Being the family historians comes at a significant mental cost. Nobody wants the loss of all those memories to happen on their watch.
We often opt for the “do nothing” strategy and let the items stay where they are, in peaceful slumber, in hopes that they will either miraculously sort themselves or, at the very least, that by some strange magic the ravages of time won’t catch up with them and bring about permanent irreversible damage. Of course, just letting your items stay untouched likely isn’t doing them any good, and magic – at least that kind of magic – doesn’t exist.
Image courtesy of TimeSorters
In our not-too-distant past, the issue often cited by us for not tending to our family collections has been lack of time. With all of our commitments and other priorities, this just never made even the bottom of anyone’s list. Rifling through scads of containers of varying sturdiness that are heavy with dust and laden with time-stealing reminiscences is a task that seems beyond the doable, let alone the enjoyable.
Still, even with the time granted to many of us by the current pandemic, the idea of tackling such a huge effort can be an overwhelming proposition. We will avoid eye contact with anything that may trigger the guilt and burden responses.
The good news is that there is a great deal you can do that will help to preserve those memories without much effort or cost. And NOW is the time to start!
Follow these simple “Best Practice” tips and your irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind memories will be kept safe for generations to come.
Look at where you’re keeping them
Museums and historical societies work hard to identify the ideal temperature, light, and humidity to house all of their precious collections. Specific guidelines have been developed to create the best storage environment for any item you can possibly name – from farming equipment to fragile lace. However, to accomplish that ideal environment, they often have specialized equipment and/or special storage areas with restricted access that help preserve artifacts as well as paper and photograph collections.
Of course, in our homes, the specialized climate controls aren’t often available. Plus, we have to live in the spaces where we house our special materials and that means opening and closing doors, windows, and often just being in the same space with our items. All of these facts alter the environment where our collections are kept. That being the case, what are our options?
Best Practice:
Take heart. While the requirements to history institutions to maintain strict climate controls can be daunting, for you, this obstacle for taking good care of your materials is another easy fix. Although the ideal environment requires significant control of the elements, we can do our best by applying a simple rule: “If you are comfortable, then your materials are comfortable.” This means, that if you would be too hot or cold, or if the humidity is too high or low for you to be comfortable, it’s guaranteed that your materials won’t like it either. It also means that specific places without climate controls such as the attic, unfinished basements and garages that are not insulated, are NOT good options for storing your collection - ever. Light is another cause of major damage to almost all items. Even if the materials don’t get direct sunlight, having them in a well-lit room without proper protection will guarantee damage over time.
Instead, keep your materials in temperature-controlled areas and out of the way of general activities where the materials can’t be jostled or damaged accidentally. Often an ideal location is the closet shelf in a room with constant temperature and humidity, and it offers the added protection from light.
Merely moving these items into an area where they can be generally protected from harm is a huge step in the right direction toward preservation.
Look at what you’re keeping with them
You’re only as good as the company you keep, or some variation of that quote, has been around for a long time. This unattributed saying is definitely true when it comes to those items that make up your history. Materials decay in different ways and create gases and chemical reactions that can damage or even hasten the physical decline of other materials when they are stored together. The best (or should I say “worst”) and most frequent material in personal collections that proves a lethal combination for nearly every other item in the vicinity – the newsprint. Most of us have discovered a clipping of a marriage notice, obituary, or some other event, laying on top of something else. A result of this close contact over time is that it leaves a ghost of an impression that permanently discolors the item it was laying on. This is acid-migration, and it happens because newsprint after the mid-1850s is made from naturally acidic wood pulp and wood-based paper; it breaks down quickly and easily over time. The result of the acid-migration and the ghost discoloration is permanent.
Image courtesy of TimeSorters
Best Practice:
One of the easiest things you can do that will greatly help the treasures is to ensure that all of the newsprint, clippings and whole newspapers are removed from the physical proximity of the rest of the family collection. You can copy, digitize, scan, or photograph the original. Many online services, such as Newspapers.com, offer the ability to find these clippings again and make an even better copy. However, there are good reasons to keep these clippings, including provenance, but do so in a separate area of your storage and isolate the newsprint in its own envelope or box to avoid contamination.
In the case of scrapbooks, purchase some unbuffered tissue paper from a company that supplies museums (e.g., Hollinger, Metal Edge, Gaylord, or University Products). Simply place a single sheet of the tissue paper between pages, a process known as interleafing. This is particularly important for scrapbooks that contain a variety of materials besides newsprint – such as pieces of cloth, hair mementos, and pressed flowers. The tissue will provide a barrier between these materials to help lessen their effect on the deterioration of other materials around them.
NOTE: Do not take scrapbooks apart in an effort to segregate materials. As opposed to random collections of materials, scrapbooks provide a unique story continuity that would be lost if you dismantle them. Instead, use interleafing as one of the steps to store and preserve them properly.
Look at how you’re keeping them
Some of the worst offenders to our family collections are clips, bands, and pins. Prior to the invention of the paperclip we know today, small groupings of papers were often held together by various means including string, straight pins and fasteners (also called brads in some cases). The string option was not very sturdy and certainly could come undone or break with use. Straight pins, which appeared just after the mid-1800s, were also less than ideal as they pierced the paper in some fashion like stapes. Patented in 1910, paperclips and a newer product called binder clips were perfect for holding papers together without damaging the paper they secured – well, at least they didn’t pierce the paper.
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But for the purposes of long-term and safe storage of materials, all of these binding options are damaging to your collection: dyes in string, color and rubber of rubber bands/gum bands, metals and finishes used in clips, or even lack of metal finish. These all can permanently damage your materials regardless of whether they involve holes or not.
In addition to what is holding papers together, how they are being stored is critical to keeping your materials safe. All paper, and the ink used on them by way of writing pens or printing becomes fragile over time. It’s true that earlier paper made from rags (hence, one of the reasons for having rag pickers as a job for children in centuries past) is stronger and more durable, however, it still requires considerate handling to ensure it remains intact and, hopefully readable, for many years to come.
Best Practice:
With this in mind, another great service you can do for your history materials is to remove all binding items from them before organizing them into folders or boxes. The steel involved in making staples and clips eventually corrodes and will leave permanent, sometimes heavy or dark, marks on your materials.
Again, keep your scrapbooks intact, but with interleafing materials. Items in the more recent “magnetic” photo albums, which are really just sticky pages and plastic (both are bad for your collection) and will continue to rapidly decay. Place them in clean file folders and boxes (acid and lignin-free are best) and store them in a cool dry and dark place.
Just Start
Tackling that mountain of materials is not as daunting a task as we all assume. It doesn’t have to be done all at once. Start by making just one of these changes to your materials. You will not only be doing your history items a huge favor, but you will also go a long way to relieving yourself of the frustration, anxiety, and guilt that comes with doing nothing.
If in doubt about what to do, give us a call. We will give you no-cost advice about whatever situation you may be facing. Just know that you have the ability – and now is the time – to finally start ensuring that those materials from your past are there for generations to come.
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together
~ Vincent Van Gogh
Terri Blanchette is a historian, writer, and heritage preservation specialist serving Virginia, Washington DC and Maryland. She provides talks, workshops, and writes for national history organizations. Her unique company, TimeSorters, LLC helps individuals and businesses capture, organize, preserve and protect those things that make up their unique histories. Terri can be reached at tblanchette@timesorters.com.
©Terri Blanchette, 2020.