Its sadly to late for you Maisie but there is an alternative others may want to consider Scan the pages and keep them in digital form Easier to read, no guilt pangs, no weight, no space taken up and the luxury of being able to read and review at your leisure You can share some or all to anyone around the globe, and by so doing create back ups with those other interested parties People are becoming far more attuned to digital media, who prints photos these days? Photos, letters, cards, certificates, records, and of course photos or scans of any other ephemera or family items can all be saved for posterity, I can scan larger objects and stitch the scans together to make a complete picture again but digitally Once scanned and confirmed, you can then enjoy reading the items and cataloguing them at your leisure, when satisfied all are recorded you can then recycle the paper without the guilt, in fact you can enjoy making space knowing the items are not lost for good You would be surprised how much can be scanned or recorded in a short space of time Nivard Ovington in Cornwall (UK) On 17/09/2013 03:14, Maisie Egger wrote: > Today I feel like wearing black crepe from head to toe as I > “cremated” my “paper family.” > > Younger daughter came to help me gut the joint then huffed and puffed > about why her father needed 16 paints of trousers, some as old as > tea, but he wouldn’t let her put them on the yard sale pile! > However, there was no sentimentality at all when she plopped two big > plastic tubs at my feet with a no nonsense look about her that I > needed to start gleaning some of my family bits and dabs.