Organizing Your Boxes of Family History Keepsakes

Overwhelmed with the volume of family keepsakes, photos and important genealogical documents I had accumulated and inherited, I had to come up with an easy way to organize and preserve these treasures. If you're looking for a way to make pretty and creative keepsake books, keep looking. I'm talking about huge piles of sometimes ugly and musty, but also precious, papers that document a person's life.

I've found a very practical (and inexpensive) way to quickly assess, sort and preserve these documents in chronological order. The end result is a book that becomes a person's history in a page-by-page timeline of their life.

Once done, the boxes of musty paper disappear in favor of a neat row of family genealogy binders. Now you can go ahead and selectively choose from the raw material, those photos and documents you want to use or copy for your creative scrapbooking projects. Or when a child asks you about Grandpa, you can pull the binder down and thumb through an illustrated history that makes him come alive.

The first step is sorting. If papers and documents aren't already sorted into family groups, do that first. Use tubs or boxes and simply toss in papers and photos belonging to each family. As you go you will find obvious discards. If you're unsure, keep it for now.

Now, starting with just one family, decide which things to keep and which to toss. You will definitely keep any formal documents like birth certificates and marriage licenses. When it comes to shopping lists and postcards, it depends on how old they are, how many there are, and how important it is to you. It's important to do this sort quickly and not get bogged down. At this point, if you hesitate over something for more than ten seconds, keep it for now.

Now sort loosely into chronological order, birth to death. Don't worry about getting things into exact order. The beauty of this system is that you can easily change the chronological order at any time without messing up your previous work.

Now it's time to simply place the documents into protective sleeves, and the sleeves into binders. If something is out of chronological order, simply move it. Now you'll be making some final decisions about keeping or tossing. Again, if you're unsure, simply file it, it's only another page.

Remember, this isn't necessarily about a finished scrapbook -- highly decorative or otherwise. It's about preserving and organizing important documents and keepsakes from a living or deceased person's life. Once you've done this, you can create other family history projects from the organized material. Or, like me, you might be content with the idea that number one, all the papers are now safely stored and accessible to family members or for genealogy research, and number two, there is no longer an overwhelming pile of disorganized family keepsakes cluttering your home and mind.