{"id":1757,"date":"2010-09-20T10:00:45","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T14:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/?p=1757"},"modified":"2010-09-20T16:30:46","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T20:30:46","slug":"sorting-yet-another-pile-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/sorting-yet-another-pile-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Sorting Yet Another Pile"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been sorting through yet another pile of mixed pictures, snapshots, ephemera, a letter or two (recent), etc. \u00a0Somehow this pile landed on my desk. \u00a0It may be an orphan-pile, left over from the boxes I was going through earlier in the year. \u00a0I am really not sure at this point. \u00a0What I do know is who the pile came from. \u00a0One of the pack-rats in my family, my Cousin Jessie, managed to pass lots of family stuff along to me; some of it came directly from her to me. \u00a0Some of it came via one or another of my siblings or from my parents. \u00a0Some of came from her long-time companion, Sister C. \u00a0Cousin Jessie never married and had no closer relatives than my parents and our family. \u00a0\u00a0She also lived a long and full life. \u00a0She also came from a long line of women who saved things and left those things to others. \u00a0And finally, she was also interested in family history (particularly the Coffin family) and she was the last in several family lines, so she had lots of stuff.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, or maybe it wasn\u2019t completely unfortunate if you ask my husband, much of Cousin Jessie\u2019s collected treasures got lost to the family (read: me) when she died and left everything to her companion. \u00a0My sister and I had been in contact with Sister C., and visited a couple of times but never were informed when she was sick for the last time and when she died. \u00a0So the entire household was cleared out and property sold before we knew it had happened. \u00a0Perfectly reasonable given that it all belonged to her. \u00a0But there were a few treasures from our family that I would have loved the chance to buy from the estate. \u00a0And a few historical objects that I would like to know had been preserved but fear went into a dumpster.<\/p>\n

Regardless of lost possibilities, I still possess a lot of things from Cousin Jessie and her family. \u00a0Just to place the people in this post: \u00a0Cousin Jessie\u2019s grandmother (Jessie Malvina) was the older sister of my great-grandmother (Katie Justice) who married a Salt, both of whom were the daughters of Zebulon B. Coffin of Cincinnati and Newport, Kentucky. \u00a0\u00a0So the keepsakes are from these combined Coffin lines. \u00a0The majority of what has come to me is paper: pictures both formal and snapshots; cards from a variety of occasions; newspaper clippings that include marriages and obituaries (often of people who are not related) but also include stories of the day; postcards and other mementos of trips; baptism cards, at least one high school commencement exercises program, many invitations to weddings or \u201cat home\u201d evenings; etc., etc. \u00a0And being the good family historian and genealogist as well as archivist, I try to sort through and figure out how to preserve what is important.<\/p>\n

And that is part of the problem I have. \u00a0What is important? \u00a0What do I need to keep and what can\/should I get rid of?\u00a0 Here’s an example:\u00a0 Do I really need to keep 6 identical cards of “Godly Resolutions” (that I think were purchased for use in a Sunday School class)?\u00a0 They’re pretty little cards\u00a0 but do I need to keep all six?\u00a0 And if I don’t keep all of them, am I being stupid to just throw out the other 5?\u00a0 Maybe they’re worth something to someone else and I should try to sell them on eBay.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want the next generation to be faced with a similar dilemma, at least not about the same stuff just because I couldn\u2019t make up my mind. \u00a0I also have a tendency to get to a point going through piles that I start to throw out everything. \u00a0And I don\u2019t want to find that I have trashed something that I want later (which happens to me all the time with books and sometimes with clothing), or that someone else wanted. \u00a0Not that anyone in my family does want any of this stuff. \u00a0That\u2019s why I have it in the first place.<\/p>\n

\"Current<\/a>
Current piles<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This picture shows the current set of stuff I am trying to deal with. \u00a0You can see that I have divided things into several piles. \u00a0I am trying to achieve the state of being able to throw some of it away and to know how and where to store the rest of it. \u00a0You can also\u00a0 see a stack of inboxes all of which contain other family stuff I am trying to sort.\u00a0 This stuff has already gone through the process of being in piles on the desktop.\u00a0 Some of it has made it into sheet protectors and there are a couple of folders there. \u00a0But it is all still sitting on my desk. \u00a0I wish once I sorted through the stuff and decided what stays and what goes, that the keepers would encase themselves in the appropriate archival container and leap into files or binders or boxes! \u00a0I don’t know why, but it takes me several passes to get this kind of mess looked through and considered and then actually *put* someplace besides my desk top. \u00a0I know that the organizer people, you know the ones who are experts at time management or organizing other people\u2019s stuff, say that you should only touch something once. \u00a0Not move it from pile to pile the way I currently do. \u00a0\u00a0This may be the beginning of a resolution or goal for next year.\u00a0 May be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been sorting through yet another pile of mixed pictures, snapshots, ephemera, a letter or two (recent), etc. \u00a0Somehow this pile landed on my desk. \u00a0It may be an orphan-pile, left over from the boxes I was going through earlier …<\/p>\n

Sorting Yet Another Pile<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-1757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","tag-coffin-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1757"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1775,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions\/1775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}