WHY oh why did DM save?

[MaryLovesPoohBear]

I'm grateful that my mom saved the ones she had.

I've used them to determine my great, great grandfather's last name. And I've found 3rd cousins.

Yes, it can be hard to go through everything. But, for me, it was worth it.

 

[RangerPooh]

See, I'm guilty of saving baby teeth. Of course, after two moves since my oldest started losing them, who knows which teeth go with which kid (I have 4 kids and who knows how many teeth).

I remember being about 8 years old and helping my grandmother clean out an old dresser in her house when they moved. Inside one of the small compartments were baby teeth. She didn't know which of her kids they belonged to as they had three.

Me, I've got 4 kids and a baggie of loose teeth. Originally they were divided by girl, then we moved, and moved again, and the baggie became a tooth tossed into a sock drawer, and two kids with missing teeth turned into 4 kids with missing teeth. I tossed 3 teeth into the drawer in the last two weeks, with another on the way to being added most likely before Christmas.

 

[lovin'fl]

OMG I could so vent about helping my mom clean out her packed basement and the crap I found. I will just say that she asked me if I wanted a first aid kit....one we had by our pool as a kid....one that had expiration date of 1990 on all the stuff including unopened bottle of eye flush. I should have checked the Band-Aids, I bet they didn't even stick anymore. She also wanted me to take a bottle of some sort of booze that had a date of sometime in the 80s and had chunks of stuff floating around in it. Couldn't even read the label. Yeah, no thanks. We filled an entire full sized dumpster to overflowing and still had to make runs to the dump and also donated piles of stuff to charities that pick up donations. Glad it's done though. But I notice her space is refilling up somehow....in just six months.

And I saved my kids teeth. Most of them were put in small ziplocs with kid's name written on it and maybe date sometimes. My two DDs had teeth pulled and I was given those in package thing with their names on it. So I could just keep them and throw out rest. My mom and MIL gave us our baby teeth and we tossed them. Hey....my DDs being identical twins, I only need to save one tooth between them...right? Same DNA.

 

[VandVsmama]

I spent the afternoon going thru a shoe box of mostly obituaries from my great Aunt who passed in 1985. This was DM's aunt an DM had this stuff since 1985 WHY did she save all these old obituaries for me to go thru.......BTW I have several more large boxes to go thru from this same great Aunt.

Do with them as you see fit. Do what works best for your family and your situation.

 

[NotUrsula]

Once you reach a certain age, obituaries tell you who is dead already, so that you don't do something embarrassing like send a Christmas card to Mr. and Mrs. when he's been dead for a decade. Lots of people, especially in small towns, save them for periodically updating their address books.

The other thing that obituaries are very handy for is identifying the married names of women you knew as children. I recently reconnected with my best friend from grade school after finding her married name in her father's obit -- I moved away when I was 8, and then moved again when I was 12, and I totally lost track of her along the way, but her maiden name was very distinctive, so I was able to find the obit. Once I had that married name, I was able to find her quite quickly; she's a kindergarten teacher in a town about 45 miles from where we were in school together.

 

[okeydokey]

My Mom passed away last week and I have just returned from her home out of state. It was comforting to be surrounded by her things. After the holidays my siblings and I have to start the process of sorting and clearing, to sell the house etc. I feel like I want to keep all of it, and I know I can't. But letters, clippings and pictures we will certainly save.

 

[mom2rtk]

My Mom passed away last week and I have just returned from her home out of state. It was comforting to be surrounded by her things. After the holidays my siblings and I have to start the process of sorting and clearing, to sell the house etc. I feel like I want to keep all of it, and I know I can't. But letters, clippings and pictures we will certainly save.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

 

[Colleen27]

My grandmother saved every news article about the Kennedy assassination. Like two boxes worth, including the bulletin from her parish's prayer service, several copies of the now-iconic issue of Life with Jackie Kennedy on the cover, and then articles about the kids and Jackie's remarriage. Along with what looks to be just about every issue of George, JFK Jr.'s magazine. And like a previous poster said, my grandmother used her books and magazines as a bank, so we do have to at least rifle through it all.

On the bright side, a local comic/pop culture/antiques shop bought a fair bit of the intact stuff... because my mom is almost as bad as my grandmother and doesn't throw anything out until she's sure it is worthless.

 

[piccolopat]

Reach out to extended family to see if anyone wants them. As PP said, these are very helpful to anyone doing the family genealogy.

 

[Dan Murphy]

My Mom passed away last week and I have just returned from her home out of state. It was comforting to be surrounded by her things. After the holidays my siblings and I have to start the process of sorting and clearing, to sell the house etc. I feel like I want to keep all of it, and I know I can't. But letters, clippings and pictures we will certainly save.

My condolences, okeydokey. 's

 

[okeydokey]

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Thank you.

 

[okeydokey]

My condolences, okeydokey. 's

Appreciate you, thanks.

 

[dyna]

The G aunt who saved the obits was 100 yrs old when she passed away many of the obits was ones even her mother saved from back in the 1800's but the family genealogy has been done for my family my G aunts family who married into the family we got all the old history just not the newer stuff of who was born the last 30 yrs.

So far I've found a few things to save an they fit in a shoe box. I still got to finish up the box I been workin on an a couple of others so large I can't hardly pick them up.

 

[BriarfoxinWA]

Ask other family members if they might want them. Found out recently that my Aunt who had recently passed, had donated the family bible to her church. This was a bible well over 100 years old and a family heirloom. She cut the family birth/death pages out and gave it away. I still haven't had the heart to tell my dad, he will be devastated. Some people really cherish these kinds of mementos.

 

[DisneyOma]

I spent the afternoon going thru a shoe box of mostly obituaries from my great Aunt who passed in 1985. This was DM's aunt an DM had this stuff since 1985 WHY did she save all these old obituaries for me to go thru.......BTW I have several more large boxes to go thru from this same great Aunt.

If they are all different, get a scrapbook and save them for the family. If they are multiple copies of the same ones, find the best copy and make the scrapbook?

We recently went through my MIL's house to help her get it cleaned up and on the market. She had somewhere over 250 obituaries. Stacks everywhere and some were copies of the same obituaries over and over again. I mentioned that many of these could probably go in the trash. She about kicked me out of the house! I asked her what she needed all these for?! She said in a very serious voice , " when your FIL dies I need to know what to write!!"
I said, "well for starters I would make it about him!!" Lol!!!

Maybe offer your mom the scrapbooking idea?

 

[Julie's Haircut]

My mother saved at least 100 obituaries cut out from the newspaper and those small cards you obtain at the funeral home. About 75% of those were from people I didn't know. I kept a few from some closer relatives.

As for finding money, when FIL died this past summer, we discovered $10,000 in cash in two different envelopes inside a decorative cookie tin stored in the foyer credenza. Plus $2000 in an old metal Band-Aid box in the bathroom medicine cabinet.

We already knew he always kept several hundred in a kitchen cabinet. His normal day to day spending money.

 

[NYCgrrl]

LOL, one of my half sisters ransacked her father's house before she moved him to her home for his last days. She knew most of his hidey-holes since he'd told her of them before he lost lucidity. Money buried in the dirt of house plants, frozen in Bidseye's boxes. Just mind boggling.