Genealogy Spring Cleaning - Air Out the Archives

The Family Curator has come up with a weeks worth of Genealogy Spring Cleaning activities. Here's today's mission:

Monday – Air out the archives.

Open storage closet and remove all archival boxes to check for damp, mildew, or any signs of moisture. Consolidate storage materials as much as possible. Inventory contents of closet and keep with genealogy files; include a snapshot of the storage closet. Write a blog post about how you started your family archive, and where you keep everything. Post the photo of your family archive.

The family archive started over 10 years ago when I realized the boxes in my parent's garage contained pictures and papers from my grandparent's house.  Some of the contents of the boxes are originally from my great grandfather's home.  Slowly I have been bringing boxes over to my house.  Most of it is stored in an interior closet in our home.  As luck would have it, it's the one room that seems to stay at a pretty constant temperature year round. It's also easy to keep it relatively dark since the room isn't used much.  Most of the overflow is in another cabinet but there is more coming in all of the time and I'm running out of room to put things.

While I have organized and scanned a good many of the items, I have come to realize that it would be better to get the remaining items out of the cardboard boxes and into something that is archivally safe before attempting to scan them all.  It just takes too long to organize and scan at the same time.  This way I can consolidate things and make more room for new items.

Here is a very high level inventory of the archive which is composed of photos, various papers and albums.

17 boxes/crates of slides

2 Extra large flat boxes

12 small boxes

18 medium boxes

9 large boxes

In addition, there are 6 large cardboard boxes, from my grandparents house, that need attention sooner than later.  Last week, I ordered archival boxes for the contents which is primarily composed of photos, business papers, correspondence and postcards.

I'll keep you posted on my progress.

© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum