21COFH - Holiday Greeting Cards

Photo by Michelle Goodrum

This week we are sorting through and putting away our holiday greeting cards - both physical and electronic.

Last year I came up with the following criteria for becoming part of the Goodrum Greeting Card Archives:

• It's from family.
• There is a photo.
• There is a note or holiday letter.
• It's from close family friends (especially those my children know).
• If it meets more than one of the above criteria, the item has a far better chance of being retained.

I haven't addressed the electronic issue previously, but it seems logical to file letters in the appropriate surname file under correspondence or if it's a photo that was sent, then in the Photos folder under the surname. Tagging the files with keywords (such as the surname) will help with locating the file later. That's if the electronic communication is from family. If the greeting is from a close family friend, hmmm, I'm going to have to think about it. Fortunately, this year we didn't get any of those.

For now, with the physical cards, letters and pictures, I am going to stick with the pretty holiday box where the cards, letters and photos are filed by year. The box doesn't measure up to any archival standards but hopefully, whoever opens it up down the road will enjoy what they find.

Carol (Relections from the Fence) mentioned, in the comments for this week's project, that she scans everything. What a great idea! I'm not going to tackle that now because I have a bigger mess to deal with. However, now that it's been written down in this "journal," there's a much higher probability this little project will get done within the next year or so.

Carol also suggests,"Check over for news of family, new babies, passing of elders, add all data to data base." This year we do have some of those kinds of events and I would have overlooked that step if Carol hadn't mentioned it. Thanks Carol! I did go ahead and scan those items as well since they are now sources in my data base.

Remember to check back mid week for our bonus 21COFH content .

© 2011, copyright Michelle Goodrum