What to do when you’ve got more treasured items than your children can take over
This article first appeared in the March 2022 edition of Comet.
There are some people whose homes are filled with items that they love, inherited from their parents, collected in their own travels, interesting purchases, precious gifts. Just so much stuff. We are certainly amongst those people. And we’re old enough that our children have long set up their own homes, and accumulated so much of their own stuff that they won’t have room for all of ours, even if our treasures were to their tastes. Which, in many cases, they’re not.
We could downsize now, and spare them the trouble. But we like being surrounded by all of these items, far too much to do that. So, is there anything else that we could do to help our offspring to deal with them when the time comes that they’ll have to? When, not to mince words, we’re both dead.
That’s something that I’ve been pondering. And the pondering has been worthwhile as I’ve come up with a solution that meets with their approval, and even enthusiasm. In case others might also find it to be a useful idea, here it is. Essentially, I realised that there are some items that are special in some way, over and above the motley. The ways in which they’re special vary. They include items with some sort of personal historic value. For example, my parents migrated from Hungary via China, and there are some items that they brought here with them, that I grew up with. There are some items that we ourselves have collected in times past, that are linked with special memories. Some items stand out in our eyes as they are actually valuable in dollar terms, and could easily be missed amongst other items around them that are not. Also, we have a lot of carpets. Some of them, similarly in some way or another, are worth more than others, to help in deciding which ones to keep amongst similar-looking ones.
As someone who loves both writing and photography, what I realised that I could do is to photograph each of those special items, and put them in a catalogue, each with a short account of their story. Each of our family – children and grandchildren – will get a copy of this catalogue, which can be seen as having a dual purpose. On the one hand, it could help to guide their choices as to what they might want to keep, or not. And, on the other, whether or not they keep any of the items, through this collection they would anyway have what could be seen as a sort of partial, cherry-picked and illustrated memoir of aspects of our lives, and those of our parents.
Not only do our children like this idea, but – having now started taking those photos – I’m finding it to be nostalgic fun. And possibly an approach of interest to some others in the same boat. In which case, happy sailing!
Anne Ring ©2022