|
Post by Shepherdess on Jan 1, 2013 1:12:30 GMT
Paula that's a great story about what your family loved to do together but its not always that way for everyone. when we cleaned out great grandmas it was a chore. everything had to be gone through and most of it was real junk. Stuff that never should have been saved but having come through the depression she saved everything (jars of old underwear elastic) every book had to be opened because ther was money stashed here and there. It wasn't good memories it was just sad and alot of work. I think you have to do whats best for you and your family. we are savers ourselves but I am working on it.
|
|
|
Post by zed on Jan 1, 2013 10:39:17 GMT
That's how it'll be when we clean my dad's out, Ann. He will not buy something if he can spend more time and effort (and usually money in the end) trying to make it himself out of things he can salvage, which has resulted in too many half finished projects to mention. I was surprised how little of the stuff cleared out from the loft evoked memories, I think the whole hoarding/clearing/hoarding thing is memory/standing joke in itself in our house My gran hoarded too, but looking back she wasn't that bad. I have boxes of genealogical research that I hope will be saved after I'm gone, and I hope everything else will be given away and not trashed.
|
|
|
Post by lyn on Jan 1, 2013 11:39:45 GMT
I remember being so excited when we moved into an old house and realised that there was stuff in the loft.
Who remembers Dell Boy's watch? Well that was the kind of thing I was hoping to find.
But it was all rubbish that needed burning and only one thing stirred up some excitement - a mummified rat.
I have an aquaintance who lives in a house where nothing is thrown away and when I'm in there I feel as if I am suffocating. The house is very small because of all the stuff.
|
|
|
Post by koffipot on Jan 1, 2013 12:41:04 GMT
Oh Lyn, that brings back memories for me. 35 years ago we bought a very old house and began renovations. We pulled out some old boarding and spotted several money bags. Great excitement, then the anticlimax, they contained only dead spiders and dust! My daughter still has the flat irons we found there - now used as bookends - and my son has the ancient kitchen scales and weights.
|
|
|
Post by jufergu on Jan 1, 2013 13:27:33 GMT
Yes, this is all the experiences that I have had too. We filled 3 commercial sized dumpsters from my dad's house and then hired someone to do the rest. I took home the family heirlooms, but had to sell off most of it for practically nothing. It was a stressful nightmare that I do not want my children to have to endure.
|
|
|
Post by Shepherdess on Jan 1, 2013 15:09:39 GMT
Lyn they have some great genealogy programs on the computer now. We have some electonc and copys of photoson the computer as my Mother in law likes to do it. We each have hard copy books as well.one of the best things we have is a long scroll of one side of her family it's like a branch of a tree about 20 feet long. The kids used to take it to school when they were doing ancestry units.
|
|
|
Post by jufergu on Jan 1, 2013 16:21:32 GMT
I just solved a family mystery that has plagued me all my life by posting on a bulletin board called GenForum. com. I was contacted by a 2nd cousin that I had not seen in 66 years. From there we gathered information and I found that my grandmother and grandfather were 3rd cousins. That is why I kept getting the same names from both sides of the family. I don't think my grandparents realized this fact, even though they had the same last name. They lived in different towns. Now, I want to join Ancestry.com, since I have new information. I know this is rambling. I will try to get back on subject.
|
|
|
Post by Shepherdess on Jan 1, 2013 21:47:12 GMT
Don't worry about it Judy our threads seem to drift all the time.
|
|
|
Post by zed on Jan 2, 2013 12:07:08 GMT
Ancestry is excellent, Judy. I used to belong to a family history society and we used it there (I couldn't have afforded it otherwise) I wish I could have kept it up, I was actually really good at it and often did research for other people and astonished them when I found people they'd been looking for for years. I collected old maps too and our central library has a great collection of ancient maps and photos of old streets too. We're the only people to live in this house, but I might hide a few things before I leave (not counting all the hair that fell through the floorboards from haircuts over the years!!)
|
|
|
Post by jufergu on Jan 2, 2013 23:17:52 GMT
I have no idea what the fee is on Ancestry.com. One of the problems on everything you subscribe to , is that they give you different levels of membership. Then you have to upgrade when you want to find more information. Is that true there also? I get pretty tired of all the upgrading that goes on.
|
|
|
Post by zed on Jan 3, 2013 9:35:46 GMT
Yeah, it's always been like that, you can usually get a trial on it though, but they want all your payment details. From what I remember it worked out a lot cheaper to subscribe for a year. Write down your areas of interest first, have a look if you can get any info elsewhere for free (familysearch.org is excellent, lots of BMDs and Census returns) then subscribe to ancestry to fill in the gaps. Just googling the names you're interested in could give you info, so many people took up genealogy. Genesreunited is quite good too.
|
|