Preserving Your Family History: Small Items

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We've covered how to preserve so much in the past several posts! If you need to catch up you'll find the posts for displaying treasures, documents and photos at these links. This last post will cover preserving those small treasures. Before you purchase anything for your small items you'll want to figure out what you're dealing with. 

My mom and I actually pulled together all the little items we knew we want to put in archival boxes before I ordered anything. We discovered that there were a lot of little pins. So for us the E-flute Clear Lid 24-Capacity Multi-Divider Box was perfect. It allows me to put a pin in each little section without them being jumbled around together. Maybe you have other things like patches, there are other divided boxes that have larger sections. Really there is probably a box for everything and it's just a matter of deciding before you order what would best fit those needs. 

Using the same Unbuffered Acid-Free Tissue that we used to pad our scrapbooks, cut them into smaller pieces. Then you'll want to scrunch them up a little bit.

That way when you put them in the bottom of the sections they make a little nest. You don't want to crunch them super tight since that would defeat the purpose. The little nest will help protect your small items. If you left them loose in the sections it's not the end of the world but they would move around when you move the box and we want to avoid that!

You want the items to nestle in the sections nicely without being tight. If you look at the stick pin in the front of the photo above he is really too big for this box. I actually removed him later and will be getting a different box that is a better fit. It doesn't help preserve anyone if you rehouse it improperly into the new archival boxes. Defeats our whole purpose here!

Everyone else has found a perfect home in this box and is well preserved for future generations. If you have only a couple items that are a couple different sizes I would recommend looking at the Modular Box System that Gaylord offers. You're able to purchase sections of different sizes individually. This way you can customize it for exactly your uses.

I hope this series has helped you feel more confident about being able to start working on preserving your family's documents, photographs and artifacts!

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