Simplifying Life

rosieben

mags50 wrote: »

I totally agree with you Rosieben :j

I do my family history too and treasure old photo's and small possessions that belonged to mine and hubby's families.

Another thing to help us genealogists... talk to us... tell us the stories from your childhood.... it helps to 'de-clutter' your minds too!

oh, yes, forgot that one, MOST important!! My Aunt (83) has had a really interesting life and luckily she's very supportive of my history project and had loads of input from her but sometimes she will just mention something in passing and when I say 'you've never told me that' she'll say 'I didnt think it was important'

Its the little stories from chldhood that are so touching, and so precious.

Greenshieldstamp_2

Would it be Old Style to have a new thread for quotes which are inspiring and thought provoking, as the ones I have read on MSE Old style are so good and deserve their own space?

Perhaps with no explanations just the quote and the author or book it is from and then when we are feeling demotivated we could have a pick me up.

Maybe a daft idea but just a thought?

BallandChain

I've just opened the 'Stonehead' link too and it looks interesting. Rosie, I know what you mean about photos as my OH's mum had this habit of throwing old photos out of people who had died. I don't know why, but he managed to rescue some of them. His brother is into geneology and luckily a lot of photos were saved by him too.

Like you say it's a good idea to write names and places on the back of each photo as now the brother is having trouble trying to place names to the pictures. (He's done a family website.)

My OH is more ruthless than me when it comes to decluttering and he bought a scanner to upload his family photos onto computer, then he wanted to throw the photos. I managed to retrieve them from him so it's ended up with my clutter! I know the photos are on computer and backed up but I feel guilty if I were to throw the photos.

Ellidee

BallandChain wrote: »

I didn't know that but who buys the 'rags'? What happens to that stuff afterwards? I'm just curious as there is probably stuff I've thrown thinking it was no good for anyone.

Well, as I understand it, they are companies who sort it and then the material is somehow recycled into 'new' . Not sure what the resulting cloth is used to make. Will ask my friend who is the Manager of a Charity Shop for a better explanation.

mary43

Pleased to know I'm not the only one filling up vital storage with family history stuff..................still, I try to keep it organised. I print off what I find out, put it in a ring binder with the off photos I'm lucky enough to have and attach a little bit of history about the person.
All myy dads stuff is boxed and labelled so I don;t see it as 'clutter' that needs clearing out, at least not yet.
Whether my kids will be interested in any of it in years to come I''ve no idea but at least it will be there for them to see. Not for them the headache of trying to work our who grans mum was etc. I do wish I'd started it earlier........I only began doing it just before Dad died..........Mumwas the only one left with any info. I struck lucky and found grandads sisters grandaughter and she gave me loads of info (she must be as cluttered up as I am...........lol). Mum told me so much that I'd never have found out....all the personal little things that matter a lot. Sadly now she's so poorly and the box of photos she still has I will never know who they are. The letters from her brother before he died in WW2 are destined to go to her stepbrother but I do hope he lets me read them first............I never knew him and know Mum thought the world of him.
I'm rambling here...............and yes, it does seem like we're appealing for lots more stuff to fill shelves and drawers but its not really.................its all vital info about who we are.
Also shows us how they lived and how little they had to live on, especially just after WW2............now if they could do it well there's hope for me yet

ceridwen

I think we all have our own personal priorities as to where we wish to devote our time and attention - and, to me, this is the key reason for simplifying - so that as little time/attention as possible is spent on the things that we regard as "regrettable necessities", freeing up more time/headspace/etc for what matters to us.

I can appreciate that this is where it is necessary to ask people before chucking personal memorabilia - to me personally it is not something I am interested in, but I understand that it is important to some people, so will expect that they make decisions as to what to keep/throw. I would find it disrespectful not to take into account that other people might want to keep things that I myself wouldnt and would always allow them the chance to do so.

Food-wise: I guess there are two basic schools of thought on food. The first one being that you eat to live - so the minimum of time and/or money possible is spent on it. The other one being that food is a pleasure of life. I fall into the second school of thought myself - that its a pleasure of life. To me - I do (if pushed for time and/or energy) follow the precept of something with protein in/something with Vitamin C in/some filler food. But its not my preferred way to be - one of the reasons I want to minimise how much time/energy I spend on housework for instance is because I dislike it - hence I work out how to do the minimum possible of it - and, with that, that frees up time for things I am interested in: friends/food/reading/etc.

mary43

I have to admit to being one of the worlds worst when it comes to cooking.........OH does most of it and he's pretty good at doing meals in advance and making a little go a long way. I picked that up from my Mum as well, and can cook if I need to but I just dont enjoy it. My satisfaction comes more from making something out of nothing when it comes to furniture........a coat of paint, stencil or skeleton leaf can turn an old set of drawers that someone else might skip into a nice piece of household furniture........well to me anyway.
I think we each have our own ways of trying to save a few quid here and there, and trying to cut out the 'deadwood' in our lives so we can concentrate of a better quality of life doing the things we enjoy most.

I might chuck out what someone else would hang on to and vice versa........like you say,we all have our priorities and its good that we can see and understand each others differences.

This thread has certainly made me think about the things I've cluttered both my house and my brain with leaving me less time to concentrate on the more pleasurable things in life. I'll continue to hoard a few things I'm sure........it seems to be in my nature..........but if I can do it in a more organised way then I'm half way to giving myself and my house a bit more space.:j

bails

I love this thread! Everything people say is so thought-provoking and my mindset has already shifted remarkably since I joined! It's so refreshing to rethink things and refocus on what is important to you personally; a way of decluttering your mind too. I have never really been into family history - I like hearing the stories but that's as far as it's gone - but perhaps this is something for the future? Sadly, I don't have grandparents left ( 2died before I was born) but my mum has quite a few stories about her parents and grandparents. I have bought a little book for each of my parents for their 60ths called ' Dear Mum/Dad..From you to me..' - each page has a title like 'who were your best friends at school?' 'how did you meet Dad?' 'what piece of advice would you like to offer me' etc etc for them to fill in. I think it'll be a lovely way of passing on some intimate details about my parents to my children and future generations.
So anyway, I've written out all the jobs I can think of so far and put them all in my pot to start tomorrow. I've made a massive batch of chilli so that when I'm too tried to cook we can grab one out of the freezer - moneysaving and simplifying. My OH does a lot of the cooking (for quite a while he had to do it all) and I feel guilty for not being able to 'share the load' as well as I would like (I'm very independent). This way I feel that I've done my bit in a way that's manageable for me. I've also found myself putting the odd thing away on my way round the house today, finding a place for things. I no longer feel overwhelmed by the clutter and that's thanks to this thread. Thankyou!

sophiesmum_2

bails wrote: »

I have bought a little book for each of my parents for their 60ths called ' Dear Mum/Dad..From you to me..' - each page has a title like 'who were your best friends at school?' 'how did you meet Dad?' 'what piece of advice would you like to offer me' etc etc for them to fill in. I think it'll be a lovely way of passing on some intimate details about my parents to my children and future generations.

Hi bails
On a similar theme to this, I made up a journal jar gift for a friends birthday recently. It was an idea from the "organizedchristmas" site. Basically you print off the little prompts which are questions about thoughts, feelings, family, life experiences, hobbies etc etc, put them in ajar and add a nice book for the person to write their memories etc in. I added some scrapbooking stuff to decorate it with and sticky pads to attach photos and put it all in a box covered to match the notebook.
My friend is very interested in family history and recording stuff for the future and thought this was a great idea. Some of the questions were thought provoking and others just abot everyday stuff which may not get recorded otherwise.

http://organizedchristmas.com/adult-journal-jar

kethry

I've found the comments about old photos and family history and so on to be extremely interesting. I'm researching my own family history and have come up against some of the same issues: photos of people, no clue who they are, other people throwing photos out, and of course, storage of them all. I've already asked my gran (when she asked me if there was anything i wanted from her home) for all her photos, or at least, access to them all, even if they eventually go to other people.

What i would say is this much. Particularly for old or completely irreplaceable photos (i.e. baby photos), a good way to deal with them is to scan them and put them onto a CD. Copy the CD to other people, so that if the worst happens, they're not completely lost. Then look into how to store the originals - if you think about it, most photos, particularly old ones, have been stored in those plastic books for ease of viewing, but if you put them on the computer, there's really no need for the "ease of viewing". In addition, if i remember right (and i could be wrong), some of the old types of albums, where you stuck the photo to the page, then put clear plastic on top, are actually causing the photos to fade. This page has more information on how to store photos correctly, and if you no longer need to "view" them then consider how to store them correctly, but not necessarily accessibly, and then they take up less space. Also, consider throwing out some of your photos once scanned, especially ones that you may not need to keep the hard copy for.

If you don't have a scanner, then i would suggest contacting the local library. I have a whole bunch of old family photos (some over 100 years old) and since i was preparing a sort of book version of "who do you think you are" as a christmas present for my grandmother, i wanted to include photos of people - and that meant scanning them. To my surprise it took less than two hours to scan the lot, which i dumped onto flickr, then went home. cost was around 50p, for the extra internet time, although i didn't print any photos (that would have cost more).

As for genealogy search, there are some free versions of genealogy programs out there for the computer, which will allow you to store information about individual people, photos and so on, and thus to get rid of paper clutter. The better ones you have to pay for but since this is a moneysaving site.. LOL. The best way to store the information is to convert the database to a GEDCOM file (which can then be read by just about any genealogy program out there) and then save a couple of copies on CD.

hope all that helps!!

keth
xx