Art of Rearrangement . . .

What is Saving? It is protecting, conserving, rescuing, salvaging, reviving, and the storing of precious things, or maybe not so precious things, yet important enough for you to cherish. The past has value. Most of all, saving is not holding onto things you don’t need, it’s about holding onto things that teach us who we are and where we came from.
So, you save things. You put them away. You store them perhaps thinking that may be one day it will get used again. However, that day does not come and the things are still in the boxes. What do you do? Throw them away? NO! Give them away? NO! What you should do is take the things out of the box, give them a fair assessment and then ask yourself if you should keep them? The answer is YES! Why? Because something possessed you to keep them in the first place.

Yes, it is a challenge to organized and hold onto things, however, by creating a Family Museum, you are preserving your memories. The way to achieve success at this endeavor is the art of rearrangement, how to organize those things in a systematized, orderly arrangement, and by doing this fixes the problem of disorganization.

The key word is organization – one box at a time. The selecting part takes time. Picking the items out, deciding between one or more of the heirlooms, dividing the space equally, and sometimes having to draw the line as to what gets saved.

There is an art to display. Look at museum’s smaller collections, department store showcase windows or visit antique shops and observe how a vendor presents their collections. The space you have will dictate how you will display your heirlooms. Organize items in groups. The main idea is to express through display the history of the heirloom and the person behind it.

Now you ask, where is there space in my home? Take a walk around your house, apartment, condo, wherever you call home. Pay particular attention to unused space. Closets, spare bedrooms, roomy hallways. A modicum of space in the living, dining, and family room will do fine. Assess the space. What is there now? How is it used? What is displayed? Can it be moved somewhere else? Can you eliminate some of those things? Bookcases, china and curio cabinets can be mini-museums. Even create personal museums, such as in the home office displaying the occupant’s career. Also in a child’s bedroom where they can create their own museum.

But remember, the main purpose of saving things is to display them. That is the principle reason for your Family Museum. There is plenty of help through websites that guide you, suggesting ways & means that fit your situation. This blog, How to Create a Family Museum, has a plethora of instructions and ideas of how to go about incorporating the art of rearrangement. Look through the blog’s archives and select the post that will give you the most help. Tomorrow I will address how to archive family keepsakes. 

Professional organizer Scott Roewer coined the phrase, “Art of Rearrangement.”

Millennium learns how to conserve and preserve his history . . .

My 28 year-old son, Charlie, decided to finally clean out his closet. What an undertaking he found it to be. File folders of newspaper clippings, bags of bags from places he shopped, paper tubes filled with drawings, and boxes filled with his insatiable desire to collect maritime history artifacts. He was overwhelmed with his collections and perplexed as to how he was going to sort through it all, what to keep, what to throw away and then how and where to keep his stuff. After a few hours, he came to me with eyes like a deer caught in the headlights, stunned and at a loss at what to do next. However, he does have some knowledge on how to keep what is most important to him because he has his own museum, albeit the fact that it was created for him by me, the family museum curator. But what he has in his possession that is not in the museum is what he needs to be concerned about. So here are a few of the suggestions and steps I encouraged him to follow:

1.  Tackle one project at a time, such as going through the file folders of newspaper clippings. Review each one, measure its relevance. Separate piles in subject-like matter. Take each clipping and trim away irrelevant print, but make sure to keep the date and publication info. Repair any rips with preservation double coated tape available at www.amazon.com. Either re-file kept clippings chronologically or place a few notable ones in a scrapbook designed for keeping newspaper. For a wide selection of albums go to Google and typed in scrapbooks for newspaper clippings. A plethora of websites will give you all the help you need to find what you are looking for.

2.  Paper tubes are wonderful for storing large drawings, poster art, etc. Charlie is an artist. From the time he started to draw, his doodles, drawings and later, his diagrams were of ships. His father and I thought he would pursue a career in technical drawing, but alas, he did not, but to this day, he still draws pictures of ships. As he grew, so did the size of his drawings. The largest is a pencil and ink illustration of his most revered ship, the TITANIC. Charlie made multiple copies of this drawing. He even gave one to his high school teacher on his graduation day, and while he was a docent at our local maritime museum, he presented it to the director of the museum.

Solution to storing large drawings are to store them in paper tubes. Charlie has several of them and one already contained drawings. But he had many others and overwhelmed at how they were all going to fit.  So we laid out each and every drawing, unfurling them and making sure frayed edges were smoothed out and rips repaired. Then the drawings were lined up and firmly rolled back into place and slipped into the tube, date and contents noted.
 While doing this and before the copies were rolled up, I had Charlie take note of the TITANIC drawing hanging on his wall. I asked him if he saw any difference in the two drawings. At first he said no, but I told him to take a closer look at the writings in the picture. Getting close to it, he exclaimed, “Oh my, the writing is fading!” Yes, it sure was. So I explained how all artwork, be it a painting, photograph, reproduction work, etc., all fade with age and by light. Why do you think art museums take due-diligence protecting their artworks. So now, with him taking care to preserve and protect his drawings, when the day comes and his TITANIC drawing has faded and no longer enjoyable to look at, he can slip the preserved one from out of the tube and replace the faded one, and once again enjoy his master piece. When looking for paper tubes, check out www.uline.com

4. Storing items that are not flat, such as booklets, brochures, maps, and in Charlie's case, maritime memorabilia, such as past ocean liner menus, programs, even tiny ashtrays, need to be preserved in a box that is used exclusively for that purpose. Called "Memory Boxes" they are available at www.punchstudio.com, Michael's Arts & Craft Stores, and Amazon.com. When you use these boxes, to help with organizing the items inside, keep to a theme, i.e.: travel, souvenirs, cards & letters, etc. Make sure fragile items are wrapped in tissue paper, photographs in slip covers, and then fashion a list of contents with dates, places, etc. And don't over-stuff the box. It won't close properly and the idea of preservation is mute.

5. As for Charlie's bag of bags, it's entertaining. If he ever needs an odd gift bag or amusing tissue paper, he's got it. This reminds me of a few words my father said to me time  and again: "Lisbit, never throw anything away. You may need it later."

Conservation, preservation, keeping, storing, organizing - all of these activities are well-worth the time and energy you put into it. And my Millennium is learning many life-long lessons as he sorts, selects, keeps & disposes of newspaper clippings, artwork, collections and then some. And he is actually enjoying this endeavor. He gets to visit times, places, and things buried in his closet and in his memory, but now has been unearthed and enjoyed again. You should do the same!
 

  

 

Happy Spring!

Spring is the time of plans and projects.” 
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

 

And so we start again the annual spring planting and cleaning. But I want to espouse something more than the planting of flowers and vegetables and the cleaning of pantries and closets. I want to champion and encourage you and your family to start creating your Family Museum.

 

As you start to organize this project, I want to offer you a word of caution: If you desire to seek out some assistance by way of a book on how-to manage your stuff, you will discover that there is an overwhelming amount of advice out there. I also discovered that each and every one of those books tells you how to get rid of your things instead of keeping them. Sure, we all accumulate far too much paraphernalia, bits and pieces, equipment, personal effects, along with junk, mess and matter. However, within all of these things are keepsakes, and they should be saved, preserved and most importantly, displayed. That is what all these books don’t tell you how to do. But my blog does! So go back through the past posts and read about how-to and why and where you can display your saved things. 

 

The first step in truly easy. Make a list. In fact, make several lists. And not only you but everyone in your family; spouses, kids, grandkids, grandparents, aunts, uncles,  cousins and friends. What kind of lists, you may ask? Lists of everything you want to save.

Why? Because you want to keep things that you treasure the most. Start with small lists so you do not become overwhelmed with guilt for having stashed away a mountain of stuff. There is nothing wrong with saving things, especially those that are important to you as a person and to your family.  

As you tackle this project and you have questions,
please do not hesitate to let me know how I can help you. Sometimes all we need is a little encouragement.

Good luck and most of all, have FUN! 

ATTENTION PLEASE: There has been a glitch with my post-a-comment. It has been corrected and now you will be able to post your thoughts, reactions and questions about any and all of the past posts. As soon as I am notified of your comment I will reply.  Thank you.