Lesli emailed me recently with this question.
“I have so many boxes full of cards & handwritten letters from my parents, siblings, and dear friends. Some of them are more meaningful than others but I have never really known how to sort them or what to do with them once sorted. I wonder if I would ever regret getting rid of them or if they might be interesting to anyone after me. So do you have any ideas of what to do with these lovingly handwritten letters? I know you are a scrapbooker and I have done just a very little of that on my own. Would your solution be something a novice scrapper could do? Am I crazy to think someone after me will want to read through any of them? I never do now except when I try to decide what to do with them!”
Great question, don’t you think? Here’s what I shared with Lesli. Be sure to comment and let us know your ideas for organizing precious keepsakes like letters and cards!
Thanks for such a great question. I think in this day of email, handwritten letters, notes and cards have definitely taken on an even more special role.
As I see it, there are four basic decisions to make.
Decision 1: Where to store your cards and letters?
The reason for keeping items like old letters and cards is because they mean something to you. So, store them where you can enjoy them on a regular basis and keep them safe. Often times I find people store these items in a cardboard box in the basement. Which isn’t ideal. For one, the moisture and humidity is bad for paper, and second, hanging out on a cold basement floor sifting through old letters — well, probably not your ideal environment for a trip down memory lane. A file cabinet on a main level in your home is a better option … but again, perhaps not the most ideal for causal browsing and enjoyment of the contents.
So think about a location where you can hang out, pull out a few cards and letters, enjoy them, and then easily tuck them back away. Once you have a location in mind, consider a storage container.
Decision 2: What type of container would work well in that space?
If you decide to store your letters and cards in a closet, a plastic bin or a canvas lidded box would work well or even an archival safe paperboard box.
A more decorative container would work well in a living or public space like your family room, den or even your bedroom. Keep your eye out for an antique box like this one.
A scrapbook is another terrific solution for keeping your cards and letters organized and easy to enjoy. Select a scrapbook that goes with the décor of the room where you’ll be storing it, so you can keep it out and flip through it any time you’d like to enjoy your handwritten treasures.
Decisions 3 & 4: What to keep and how to sort your keepers?
I love your question about whether or not these items will have meaning to future generations. There’s really no way of knowing. So I wouldn’t let that be your reason for holding onto things you don’t want to keep, nor would I let it be your reason for not keeping things you do want to keep. I think you should let your wishes for these items, since they have such meaning to YOU, guide your decisions. Keep the cards and letters that are special to you…those that you want read again from time to time…those that make you happy when you read them. You can decide which letters to keep as you’re sorting them.
You could sort your cards and letters by person (who gave them to you) or you could sort them by date (probably a bit harder to recreate if they aren’t sorted this way already.) If you chose to sort by person, it will be easier to decide which items to keep and which you can let go of. By having all your cards and letters from a single person together, it will be easier to recognize your favorites. Weeding out the others will allow you to access and enjoy your favorites more regularly and easily. For items you don’t keep, you could recycle them or perhaps use the words and images from the cards to make a decoupage project — like a box to store your keeper cards and letters in!
Remember if you have ideas to share, please comment!
I have been wrestling w/this problem myself. Thanks for your tips!
I am so glad lesli (my fabulous sister-in-law) asked this question! It’s a good one. Currently, I have my special letters in a personal file in my cabinet. But, I love the idea of putting them in a pretty box on a bookshelf. I have just the spot!
thanks.
I have been going through our filing cabinet over the weekend and was ruthless and effective until…I got to the file folders with “family letters.” Great food for thought here. Thanks. I may look for an old suitcase and save just what fits in there. Next is that cardboard box on the bottom of the stack in the garage labeled “school mementoes.”
Thank you for the advice. Really need this now that I am starting to get school projects and papers coming in.
This is a very good question and a problem that used to plague me. I keep my old letters in two plastic containers. I separate the letters by person in gallon sized ziploc bags. Each bag has the person’s name written on it with a Sharpie. Letters are then filed into the appropriate bags after enjoying them a few times. I do find myself going back and reading them. Oh, I also try to remember to put the date on the letter somewhere if the sender didn’t write it on there.
Thanks for a good post.
Thank you for sharing this! We are getting ready to move and one of the things I am having problems with is all of the cards and letters I want to keep…what to do with them. Great tips!!
How to store? AND Will anyone later be interested?
On storage, I just helped with a scrapbook (it ended up bing 3 books) to help an accident victum remember all of the support and prayers and caring that was there for him. We had many cards to preserve. A lot of them were handmade by students. Folded cards with art work on all sides. You can’t cover any of it. The solution we came up with was 8 1/2 x 11 page protectors in an album and inserting the cards. They are eaisly seen and can be taken out to look at too.
Will anyone be interested after me? You may never know but let me tell you about something I found. I was going through some of my Mom’s old, old, old family pictures and newspaper clippings when I found a folded piece of writing tablet paper. On it My paternal grandmother had traced my aunt’s hand two times, one with her fingers open and one with them held together. She noted that my aunt was only 3 months old and was already holding out her hand. Doesn’t sound like much does it. HOWEVER; my grandmother died 2 years before I was born and my aunt died at age 5. I never knew either of these relatives. I can not tell you how much I connected to them with this little piece of paper. My aunt’s hand. My grandmother’s thoughts in her own handwriting. This is piece of paper is one of my most prized possesions. Will anyone be interested after me? You never know.
Keep the cards and letters…store them…treasure them…revisit them often.
thanks mary for your post–this is a great idea on storage for me since i have so many cards too as well as delicate papers. and the story of finding your aunts hand and grandmothers writing hit home. i am more and more convinced to hold on to more of these hand written items than to rid myself of their uniqueness. thanks again. lesli
I have a lot of letters and school mementos that I have started scanning and saving to my computer. This allows me to throw away the original and free up storage space without the nagging feeling of “I’m going to want that someday”.
There are some things I still want to keep, but for those “questionable” items, this is a great solution for me. My mom had given me a box of artwork that I had done as a kid that I didn’t want to store, but had a hard time just throwing away. I scanned them and then didn’t feel bad at all about throwing the originals away.
Thanks for the great idea, DeeAnn. And isn’t it so interesting that you didn’t want to store the items your Mom saved for you? We just can’t be sure what will be special to our kids…so it’s OK to save what feels right to us in a way that works for us. Thanks for the great idea and the perspective 😉
Aby
thank you for the useful tips. Since I have been communicating mostly in email, my letter collection is not that sizable. However, I do want to keep what I have and store them in a way that will invite me to reread them and go over them more often.
i’ve been looking for “the perfect box” for the letters. I haven’t found a suitable one, but it should not be super expensive, will keep my letters/cards safe from moisture, big enough to accommodate all the various sizes of the handmade cards and easy to design or decorate, and also portable enough so I can move it around in my home. I was thinking of organizing the letters by year, but your thoughts on doing it by person made me rethink.
Have you got a nice box that I can store the letters of consolation that I received after my husband died.
My husband and I have been together since high school and during my senior year he left for boot camp (US Army). We have now been married almost 23 years and while cleaning our house to clear out some items and make room for our son to go to college, we came across all the handwritten cards and letters from boot camp, AIT, and two deployments- one in 1990-1991 and one recently. Of course the last one had very few hand written letters as we were able to email, PM, etc.
I want to keep some of those letters from the early days because it really show the love we had (and still have) for each other and the heart ache of being apart. I would love to find out a way to preserve these for my children and grandchildren to read some day.
Hi my husband is in the Marine Corps and I’ve been trying to think of how to keep all of the letters he has sent me safe!! It’s been a long 3 months away from each other :(. Thank you for giving some helpful tips! I already have them sorted by date so this just helped in so many other ways!
I never thought of organising them by person because whilst some do have dates the majority I think don’t have dates so thank you for the idea!