Last week we talked about creating our “after death” instruction book. We are 95% done with the balance being physical things. What needs to be done with our stuff – important stuff? Memorabilia, jewelry, photographs, etc. Soon we will be taking photos of certain jewelry items and designating who gets what.
But there is all the other stuff. You know, tucked in a corner somewhere. Or maybe in the attic or basement. Most of us have a box or three filled with memorabilia. Ticket stubs from high school, yearbooks, old report cards, baby items, greeting cards from loved ones, tick-tacky from vacations – you all know what I mean. The things that have/had meaning for you at some point in your life. But what about after you’re gone? Will they mean anything to anyone else? Will your kids or other designated people have to plow through everything, tossing most because there is no personal meaning for them?
We’ve started going through our two totes of “stuff” – we each have one. Photos are getting scanned and labeled. Other things are being sorted into piles to toss, sell, save, or send off to loved ones now. Can you guess which pile this went into?
A piece of lumber that was thrown into our laps during the Lumberjack Show in Ketchikan, Alaska in June 2010 while on our Alaskan cruise.
Back in the “olden days”, we would have piles of photographs passed from generation to generation until no one remembered who was in the photos or where they were taken. Then they were tossed. Now we have thousands of digital photos stored on our computers and in the cloud. If they aren’t labeled in some way, will anyone care about them? I’m as guilty as anyone but at least they are, mostly, organized into folders by year/month/location. But people aren’t noted and I admit I won’t be taking time to add keywords or better label them now. I suspect the files will be discarded along with everything else on my computer when I’m gone.
So this is our chore for this week along with the designations mentioned above. Have you started your instruction book yet? Do you need to start culling items in that memory tote? Why not let your family enjoy things now rather than burden them with the process of going through them when you are gone.
Think about it…no, it’s not easy but we can make things easier for our loved ones.
