Saving 'stuff' 101

When people show Jaggar and Williams old photographs, they often have no idea who is in the pictures. "In a family, when you know every person in a photograph and what they were doing that day, that's very powerful," Jaggar says. She and Williams recommend labeling photos with as much identifying information as possible - date, names, location, and occasion.

Carolyn Curasi, an assistant marketing professor at Georgia State University who has studied family heirlooms and their meaning, calls stories "the history transfer" that is passed along with objects. "People want these stories to be told. They want to live on through their objects long after they're gone."

It's a lesson Cindy Evarts of Fulton, Md., learned when she and her family were cleaning out their basement before a move. When she found a strange object with spikes, she told her husband, "Get rid of it, it's horrible."

But he remembered stories her father had told him about being the son of missionaries in Japan. Mrs. Evarts contacted her grandmother and learned that this object, made of bamboo and metal, was used by imperial guards to protect the emperor. That information changed her opinion of it. "This ugly thing has now increased in value in my eyes because of the stories," she says.

Evarts also owns a quilt her great-grandmother made as a young girl. "The quilt is certainly something you worry about how to preserve," she says. "Right now it's packaged up. We don't want the light to hit it, and we don't want it to fall apart."

Not everything should be kept under wraps, of course. Owners must weigh their desire to save things for future generations against the pleasure of enjoying them now.

As American homes fill with more and more possessions, Williams sees a growing national desire to preserve cherished objects. Television programs such as the "Antiques Roadshow" feed that interest. And as baby boomers grow older, he says, "they're trying to find some touchstone with the continuity of history."

It isn't even necessary for those touchstones to have great value. Monetary worth is typically not the ultimate factor. "For most people, deep down in their hearts, sentimental value trumps everything," says Williams. "The nonfinancial aspects are extremely powerful and not to be disregarded."

A humbled Jaggar, still thinking about her improperly stored possessions in the basement, agrees. "After the flood, I would have given away the silver and crystal if I could have saved my son's poetry, the photographs that were downstairs, and my daughter's art," she says. "That stuff you can't go out and buy."

Don Williams suggests the following steps to help in preserving the special belongings that make up what he calls the "Museum of You."

• First, decide what you want to keep and why. No one can save everything.

• Avoid storing favorite possessions in basements and attics. If those are the only spaces available, take precautions. In basements, store valuables on high shelves, or stack them on wood planks. In attics, ventilate with an automatic fan to keep the heat down.

• Never wrap silver in plastic cling wrap.

• Never hang paintings above a radiator or heat vent, or on a wall that receives direct sunlight.

• Do not use bare hands when handling dull ceramics such as terra-cotta and raku. They are easily stained by skin oils. Fingerprints can be permanently disfiguring.

• To display old photos, make duplicates and display them, storing the originals.

• Do not glue photos in an album. Use corner mounts on pages of plain rag paper or archival buffered paper.

• Store textiles in an environment with low light or no light, moderate humidity and temperature, no bugs or mold, and in containers such as archival boxes and acid-free tissue.

• Antique art glass and stained glass often become "crizzled" with a network of fine surface cracks, resulting in a frosty appearance. Some ceramics that are very fragile develop crazed glazes. Do not handle these any more than necessary because they are easily damaged.

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