WIFAAC--How to Archive Family Keepsakes

So there is another book I want to tell you about that I found at a genealogy conference this year.  At the Spring UGA Conference we had Denise May Levenick "The Family Curator" come out to give the Friday night presentation and speak at the conference.  She is a really sweet lady and I am glad to call her a friend.  She was kind enough to leave me a copy of her book: How To Archive Family Keepsakes.  I keep picking it up to blog about it but I keep getting drawn in and ending up reading it over and over again.  It is chock full of resources about what to do with your family heirlooms.  You may have already heard about it if you read the blogs because she did a great blog tour around the first of the year with it.  But I'm going to add my $.02 because it is just a really great book.

I love how clearly it is laid out with checklists and sample organization sheets.  It drew me right in at the beginning with pages on helping you distinguish what your goals are for a collection and creating some objectives about how you are going to deal with things.  I thought that was a great idea and something we don't think about enough.  But having a clear purpose in mind as we sort through and organize and archive helps us keep on track as to how we take care of our family treasures.

When I wrote my book, Zap The Grandma Gap, I was a little nervous about being bold enough to say that you shouldn't keep everything, but you should actually weed what you have so that the next generation of your family isn't overwhelmed.  Denise actually had a list of what to keep and what to not keep on page 48!  Yea!  I wasn't the only one.  She lists things to save, things to skim then trash, and things to trash.  It is a great guide for how to go about getting rid of things.

And I was happy to learn that we are kindred spirits in that we are both "fiend"s for china.  She says she has become the "family china shop" in case any of her family members change their minds about keeping the family dishes.  My grandmother loved dishes and silver too so I come by that honestly.

And I took good notice of her suggestions on page 94 and 95 of how to take care of quilts.  I heard some great suggestions at the SCGS conference about adding the story to my Grandmother's quilt, but Denise's book gives me all the know how on making sure the quilt itself is well taken care of.

The book is chock full of great ideas on how to care for your family treasures for the regular person.  It is a must read for anyone who cares about making sure their family can continue to treasure the past.  Look for it at her Family Curator site. And check out the rest of this review over at my Zap The Grandma Gap blog where I talk about her section on Digital Wills.  Good stuff!