***This post may contain affiliate links. Gaylord has provided the products mentioned in these posts for free but all opinions are my own***
I am so stoked to finally be bringing you this blog post series. This is something I've been thinking about doing since I started Musings of a Museum Fanatic and I'm excited to be partnering with Gaylord Archival.
Preserving your family history can be a daunting task! I totally admit that even though this is literally what I do for a living that the idea of doing it for my own family's history seriously stresses me out. That's why I'm going to be sharing over the next 6 posts easy ways for you to start preserving that history! I'll be sharing what I think are probably the most common things you'll be wanting to preserve. We'll be starting of this week with your documents.
Gaylord Archival has made starting super easy! They have several different types of kits including this My Family History Kit. It contains everything from cotton gloves to folders to a family history chart that will start your process off smoothly.
First I want to share a few best practice tips.
Now that you've got a good basic foundation let's jump in! This might seem like a no brainer but if you're able to pull together all the documents you want to preserve so you're looking at them all at once it makes life so much easier. If you're not able to it's not the end of the world. You might have to go back and do some reorganizing along the way. I decided for my project since the vast majority of the papers I'm working on preserving are relating to my immediate family that I would break them up by family member.
The Classic Full 1" Tab Letter Size File Folders that come in the kit are perfect for those really important documents, like graduation programs, report cards and other documents.
Labeling your folders is extremely important. When you go back later or when your grand kids look at this years later it will be nice to know who this document related to and when the event happened. I decided that since I was preserving documents relating to myself, my parents and my brother I would start with the family member it was relating to on the top left, then the type of document and the date if I know it or it was on the document.
I've never used the 80 lb. Text Buffered Long Side Opening Envelopes but I actually really love them. With a lot of my dad's documents he has several of the same time from throughout the years, like the business cards you see below or programs from various events. It doesn't make much sense to put those in the other folder, they'll probably fall out too! These envelopes corral everything nicely and allow for more
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