Family History Project in 9 Brutal Steps, Part 2 + BARBIE

Part 2 of converting the overwhelming boxes and piles of memories into a portable personal museum that will be a joy to own and easy to pass on for generations, PLUS my love and hate of Barbie

Family History Project, Part 2

(NOTE: This content will eventually be expanded into an e-book available for purchase. Enjoy this condensed and simplified version here for free. I am just so excited about the finished product that I can’t wait to share it with you.)

In last week’s newsletter, I addressed the first four steps of the process I have developed for cleaning out our storage spaces filled with memorabilia, artifacts, and photos. I called it a Gen X project, since my generation bridges the gap between the generation that kept hard copies of everything and the generations that have grown up in a digital world, but of course the same steps could be taken by anyone. The goal here, however, is not simply organization. The goal is cutting down to the most essential elements so you can curate your precious memories into a portable and tidy family history museum—something that not only clears clutter from your home and your mind but is also easy to enjoy now and pass down to future generations when that time comes. If you missed Steps 1-4, I suggest you start there (this link takes you there), then come back to the following, Steps 5-9.

STEP 5

It’s time to trim down the stacks and boxes of photographs you set aside in Steps 2 and 3. This step is tedious and will require your eyes and hands to keep moving like you are an automaton. You will need occasional breaks to stretch your neck and back and legs, but you won’t need much mental focus. As such, I would recommend finding an interesting audio book or a playlist of favorite music. The distraction will help you continue to move forward. I have reviewed a good audiobook option below.

Now that you have opened all the boxes and bins and drawers and closets, and now that you have emptied all the photo albums and frames, you can compile all of your photos in one place. You need a lot of open space. Clear away a block of time and an entire table or countertop area and don’t plan to use it for a couple of days or more. As overwhelming as it might feel right now, you need to go through ALL the photos. For me, this meant eight of those 1990s floral photo boxes (each one the size of a shoebox), plus several more big stacks—a big job that lasted several days. But, going through all of it will give you a rough inventory of what you have, which will be essential for completing Steps 6 and 7 so you can finally get to the really fun part, Step 8.

Take one small stack of photos at a time, sorting them into rough piles like:

• the firstborn kid

• all the kids together

• our whole family

• just us as a couple

• the cousins

• the grandparents

• family history from way back

• houses we have lived in

• pets

• the Great Road Trip of 2012

• my professional life

• my spouse’s childhood

• the college years

• friends who have felt like family over the years

Some of the photos may represent difficult memories. If it’s possible, just focus on your audiobook. But when you need to grieve, give yourself grace; cry the tears that need to be cried. As much as possible, don’t allow yourself to stop and feel all the feels or reminisce. Splash some cold water on your face. Drink some water. Take a brisk walk around the block, then keep going. The end will be worth it.

As you sort photos into piles, feel free—very free—to discard photos. You will hopefully end up discarding significantly more than you keep by the end of Step 6. Unless it might be the only photo of a particular person or important event, discard any photos that are poorly composed—the subject is far away in the background or crammed awkwardly up against one edge—or that are too blurry or too dark. Remember to place discards face-down—again practicing the out-of-sight, out-of-mind theory. Whenever your discard pile grows to an unwieldy size, take the whole pile or box and dump it into the trash bag, being careful to keep everything face-down, even as it goes into the bag. This is not a time to linger. This is a time to cull. What feels brutal now will be a blessing later. NOTE: Don’t discard double or triple prints quite yet. Keep those for Step 6. For now, just get rid of the stuff that is obviously junk.

Don’t forget about the photos you pulled out of frames. Now that you have inventoried and organized what you have, do you really need to keep that 11x17 if you have a 5x7—or better yet, a wallet-size, of the same image? Once all the photos, of every size, have been placed into piles—including perhaps a couple of small piles you just couldn’t figure out how to categorize—you are ready to move on.

STEP 6

Chances are, some of your piles are huge—particularly those of your own children when they were young, if you are a parent. Most of us stopped printing regularly once digital photography became our norm. At this point, seeing that you have far more prints than you will ever need, many of them double prints of the same shot, or four different poses of essentially the same image, it is time to share the wealth. Text or call your family members and ask if they would like to have some of the photos. With my own kids, I said something like this:

“I’m going through storage and found so many great photos from your childhood. If it’s ok, I would like to put together a bag of photos—a stack about 2 inches high—and send/deliver it to you. I will keep plenty of others for our family’s long-term storage, so you are free to sort through the stack I send you and discard any you really don’t want to keep. I don’t want them back. Would that be ok?”

As soon as you get the go-ahead, take a quart-sized Ziplock or an XL sandwich bag and begin filling it with a selection of photos—careful not to make it too overwhelming or repetitive—then label it for that person and set it aside. I don’t recommend texting your kids previews of exactly which photos you will be sending. This will create extra work for both of you and could result in hurt feelings. Just put together a nice selection of images that represent their childhood well and send it off. If your kids discard or lose or damage those images, it is their loss, not yours. You still have the ones you want to keep for Step 7.

Do the same for friends and cousins and the like. If the photo is not vital to telling the story of your history, consider passing it on to someone who might enjoy having it. For me, those sets of images were much smaller than the kids’ stacks, so I did snap cell phone images of the prints, then texted or posted them on Facebook to old friends, asking them to private message me their mailing address if they would like to own the photos. Of course, don’t publicly display photos that are clearly unflattering, unless you know for sure your friend is cool with that sort of thing.

Mailing photos off, knowing they were going to good homes, felt to me like I was honoring the memories we had shared together. It was satisfying to send off a dozen envelopes that I knew would bring smiles to faces on the other end when they arrived in someone’s mailbox. And, if I ever want to see the image again, I now have a digital copy of it on my phone and in my cloud storage.

STEP 7

Now that you have gone through all your photos, discarded the poor-quality images, and set aside the ones that are being rehomed to different locations, it is time to go through each individual pile with a more critical eye. By now, you have a very good idea of what photos are in your possession, so this is where the hard cuts begin. For example, now that you know you have 27 great photos of you and your spouse as a couple, even after setting aside three or four in each of your kids’ to-go bags, reconsider your categories and your choices. Should one of those photos actually be moved to the pile about your career, since it was taken in the office at the surprise party they threw for you—with all that cool retro-looking office equipment in the background? Are there some photos that really could be discarded, even though they are perfectly good photos, because you have others from that same era that are even better? This might be an excellent time to bring your spouse, if you have one, into the process—not in an overwhelming way, but perhaps something like, “Could you help me select the twelve best photos in this little stack?” Or maybe, “Can I get your eyes on this pile from your childhood? Are there any that just aren’t important to you, or always bring up an uncomfortable memory for you?” You may have been keeping things that just aren’t important after all.

Don’t forget, the discard pile is not only face-down for your own sanity, but also for other members of your family who might walk past your project and pause to look. They gave their blessing to this process before you began, remember, and if they question you now, remind them you are doing the whole family a great service. The simple question, “Do you trust me?” will likely be enough to send the looky-loo away. Make the hard cuts; say goodbye and deposit the discard piles in the trash. You will thank yourself in Step 8.

STEP 8

Good news—you have completed the most difficult steps of this process and finally reached the fun part. It is time to sync the stacks of photos with the paperwork and other treasures that survived Steps 1 and 2. Now that you have cut out the unnecessary bulk and you know exactly what you possess related to every part of your life history, you are ready to curate your memories into individual museum-style exhibits—portable ones that store easily. This is so exciting!

Start with an easy one. For me, that was the time I went to Papua New Guinea to teach at an international school for a term as part of my student-teaching assignment. I found all the best photos from PNG (which I sealed first in a smaller bag), some paperwork related to the school and the classes I taught, the traditional outfit a local woman sewed for me, some of the language-learning materials I used, the t-shirt from the 5K fun run that I ran to support their first delegation of Olympic athletes, the letters exchanged between my then-fiancé and me, and my journal. All those things fit easily into a single 2-gallon size Ziplock bag. Squeezing the air out and sealing it shut was the coolest feeling—I had created the first exhibit in my portable museum.

With a great sense of satisfaction, I set that bag into a clean, empty bin, and started on the next exhibit—my husband’s woodworking career. Next, I compiled a bag/exhibit about my years of being a professional photographer; as well as bags containing memorabilia from my parents and grandparents’ lives, including that one special brown elephant toy with the red and blue plaid ears that I mentioned in the previous post. That elephant is bulky, but I didn’t keep very many big things and that one was important to me. The rule I made for myself was, so long as the sum total of a particular element of our history fits easily (not crowded or hard to seal) into a 2-gallon Ziplock bag, it can stay.

Once all the family history project piles of everything from everywhere are sorted and organized into bags, and the bags are all tucked neatly into the bins, finish Step 8 by labeling your bins. I wrote “Sherry and Andy Chidwick’s long-term storage” with a Sharpie on crisp white 4x6 cards, then used clear packing tape to affix the cards to the lids of the bins. Cover the entire card with tape so the ink won’t run if someone spills their coffee on the bin at some point. Now all your most prized memories are accessible, easy to grab if you ever need to evacuate, and easy to identify by future generations. I filled two tubs with these Ziplock exhibits, plus one additional tub with oddly shaped items that didn’t work well with the flat(ish) files of the bags.

STEP 9

Before tackling this last step of your family history project, I recommend you take a break. Celebrate finishing the hard work first, then come back to this step. When you’re ready, and at your own pace, take a 4x6 card or two and write a description of the contents of each bag, or a summary of what is important about that part of your life. Tuck each of these cards face-up in their respective exhibit bags so someone from a future generation can easily glance to see what that particular bag is about.

BONUS! STEP 10

Share your work with the whole class. Invite your partner or kids, your neighbors or your friends, to see what you have done. Show them the bags—at least the outsides of them. They might even want to peek inside. As long as the bags were not stuffed too full, it should be easy to take the contents out, enjoy perusing them, then package them back up again. Chances are, others will be thrilled with the result.

Now, let’s get this party started! Happy sorting and curating! It’s hard work, but the result is so worth it. I’d love to hear your thoughts about this. Do you think it will work for you? Do you have another system you’ve tried or considered? Drop a comment and let’s talk about it.

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Book Recommendation

If you are inspired by this family history project and ready to learn a little more about minimizing, I recommend reading Goodbye, Things, by Fumio Sasaki. It is a fairly short read—minimal, you might say—and it is filled with practical and empowering tips for cutting down on your possessions, no matter how far you want to take it. I don’t feel called to the extreme level of minimalism he himself practices, but I found the book helpful and motivating just the same. PRO TIP: the audiobook is only four hours long and would make an excellent soundtrack to some of the time spent cutting and curating for your family history project.

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Loving and Hating Barbie

I have had a love/hate relationship with Barbie over the decades. Basically, I’ve loved hating her at every stage of my life. I did not play with Barbies as a child, nor did I offer them to my own children.

When my youngest discovered them without me at age 7, I was conflicted. I didn’t really want Barbies in the house, but when a kid saves up their own money to buy a toy, it’s hard to say no. At least I was pleased to see the three thrift store purchases were promptly given wild haircuts and issued superpowers. The doll named Grace had an alter ego called Karate-Chop Girl. Abbie was also known as Back Alley Cat Girl. According to a blog entry I wrote in 2007, “she is the one you want on your team if an altercation is occurring in a dark back alley--where many crimes do indeed occur. She can sneak up on a perp in the darkness and her punch is strong enough to cause instant death.” The final member of the Wonder Trio, Elizabeth, doubled as Super Hair Wrap Girl. From the blog entry: “Her wild mane of hair can be used as a weapon, not only to grab people by the arm if they are getting away, but also to strangle bad guys on the spot. It also comes in handy if she needs to swing out of the path of danger.” As the final commentary on my youngest child’s Barbie collection at the time, I noted: “All of the girls can fly. And I've just been informed that Grace also has every other superpower there is. The other two just call her Super Girl.”

Ah, that kid made me proud. I could get behind Barbies like that.

A year later, when my eldest invested in a collection of second-hand G.I. Joe dolls, there was a short period where budding romances developed between the two sets of toys. Over the span of a month, I would frequently be surprised in the morning by scenes like this in the refrigerator—indicating that a child or two had arisen in the middle of the night to set things up. Even though the chilly tableaus were a little sappy for my taste, I couldn’t help but being proud of the creativity.

Years later, when I discovered “The Crazy Barbie Lady” in Silverton, Oregon in 2015, I got so excited that I took a bunch of photos. Her website appears to be defunct, and her sense of humor may not be your style, but these images still amuse me to no end.

It’s a Barbie-Q!

So, it came as a great surprise to myself when I realized I wanted to go to the movie theater this summer and see what all the pink pandemonium was about. It surprised me even more when my husband mentioned he wanted to see the Barbie movie. I will admit, Barbie was one of the most entertaining, innovative, and creative films we have seen in a long time—and it was also surprisingly deep and meaningful, as all good satire is.

Rather than militantly feminist to the point of being anti-man, as I’d half-expected it would be, I found Barbie suggesting that women and men both are vitally important and should be able to pursue their dreams—big or small, professional or parental—without relying on the gaze of another to assign them value. In-fighting among women to prove who is doing womanhood right is counter-productive, just as fighting among men over what it means to be a man is silly. For these reasons, as well as many others, my husband and I both found the movie refreshing.

Many insightful articles have already been written about the cultural phenomenon that is this summer’s Barbie movie. Here are three of the best ones I have read in the past week:

Matt Mikalatos (Imaginary Friends): Satire, Barbie, and Bruce (substack.com)

Amy Peeler (Holy Post): Neither Barbie Nor Ken - A Barbie Movie Review (holypost.com)

Hannah Anderson (Christianity Today): Barbie and Ken Go East of Eden | Christianity Today

I don’t need to reinvent any wheels here, but I will point out my favorite moment in the movie. Barbie, new to the real world outside Barbieland and fairly overwhelmed by it all, rests for a moment at a bus stop. She notices an old woman, played by 91-year-old legendary Hollywood and Broadway costume designer, Ann Roth, at the other end of the bench and greets her. The woman looks up, her advanced years communicated clearly through her wrinkled face, splotched with age, and her thinning white hair. Barbie wants all women to feel beautiful, so she politely gushes, “You’re beautiful.”

The woman smiles, not overly impressed with this statement of the obvious, and her blue eyes twinkle with merriment. Her reply, a simple, “I know it,” is the most genuine and impactful line in the movie, in my opinion. In a film otherwise packed full of Perfect 10 young women, her body is frumpy and her clothes are plain, but her contentment absolutely radiates. As Barbie looks on in wonder, the woman simply turns back to the book she was reading.

That’s it. The scene is over. It does not advance the plot. The character is never seen in the film again. It wasn’t until after the movie that I realized the power of that simple scene. The old woman at the bus stop understands her worth and doesn’t need it to be validated by anyone else. She is 100% comfortable in her skin, saggy as it may be.

Click the links above if you seek a more thorough assessment of the messages of the movie, or even the deeper theological issues behind it. I agree with most everything pointed out by the three talented writers I’ve linked to here. But for me, some of the best movie magic was in the woman at the bus stop.

And apparently, the director, Greta Gerwig, feels the same. 'Barbie': Who Is the Woman at the Bus Stop? (msn.com)

Oh, Barbie, what have you done? I can’t hate you anymore. What has been your relationship with Barbie over the years? Did you see the movie? What did you think? I’d love to continue the conversation in the comments.

(To make your own silly Barbie or Ken movie selfie, click into the official movie site’s selfie generator, here.)