I was so delighted to see in my email this week that my friend, Amy Johnson Crow, is promoting the podcast episode she and I recorded back in the fall of 2019, Downsizing and Family History.

When I spoke to her in 2019 I didn’t have any personal experience with dealing with inherited family history items. I always viewed my parents as non-collectors and figured when the time came I wouldn’t be faced with too many challenges. But I’ve gained some experience now and there were plenty of challenges. In March, my father’s older sister moved into skilled nursing and I sold her home for her. (I’m her Power of Attorney.) I requested that any family-history related items be taken to my father’s condo for me to go through later. Then in May, I moved my father into assisted living and faced down going through his stuff and my aunt’s stuff in the same week so I could get his condo on the market. He passed away August 20, only three months after moving, and I needed to clear out his assisted-living apartment in a matter of a few days.

I tried to practice what I preach and get in touch with what’s important to me about these documents and photos. I tried to evaluate their potential value for future historians. I offered a bunch of stuff to my brothers (one took stuff, the other didn’t). And I shipped some boxes to myself.

I have sorted through the seven boxes I shipped in May but am still processing those documents and photos. I am anticipating a shipment today of stuff from my father’s apartment. I’ll spend some time in the coming week going through those items and figuring how/where to store them. I know that Stacy Julian’s method, How to BEGIN with the BOX, will be very helpful again.

As the family historian for my family, I feel a lot of responsibility for these items. But I’m going to use my expertise as a professional organizer to try to save those items that are the most valuable from a genealogy standpoint. My perspective, as I shared on Amy’s podcast, is that the more I keep of any one category of item, the less special any of it is. But I also know that now isn’t the best time to make decisions with lasting repercussions. So I will probably save more than I might otherwise for later consideration.

If you’ve been through this, I’d be very interested in hearing about your approach!