Three great ideas to reduce family heirloom clutter

by Houstory Publishing

For some, the equation is simple. Family heirloom = family clutter. This is understandable because, let’s face it, it can be a challenge to effectively — and attractively — keep and display the precious belongings that have been handed down to you.

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While we love family heirlooms, we do understand that being a “Family Curator” is a big responsibility. Case in point: you know that 135-year-old pickle passed down to you by your great-great-grandmother? Yeah, you know the one. How the heck do you display that?

Luckily over the past several years, we’ve kept our fingers on the pulse of what people are doing with their precious belongings, and we are going to share a few of these ideas with you.

Richmond Magazine’s R Home: “Embroidered memories: Sarah Wiley of Huger Embroidery stitches nostalgic keepsakes“

Synopsis: “Sarah Wiley has found a way to celebrate and preserve … mementos through her embroidered designs.”

 

Sunset Magazine: “How to mix vintage treasures with your own upbeat style”

Synopsis: “Be inventive. If you like the shape of an old piece, hold on to it until inspiration strikes.”

 

Making Lemonade Blog: “Quick Ways to Display Heirlooms”

Synopsis: “Here’s my advice when it comes to heirlooms: wrapped up in storage boxes, they don’t help anyone.  If you love something and it brings happy memories, find ways to display it so it honors those memories.”

 

The Heirloom Registry

Finally, as all of these folks point out, what good is displaying a family heirloom if no one knows why it’s significant? If you want to make sure its story lives on, we’ve got such an easy way to help. Without a story, a 135-year-old pickle is just a disgusting cucumber.

Do you have any clever ways to display family heirlooms? What are some of the unique heirlooms that you like to show off in your house? Do you feel pressure to display? Let the Houstory Nation know!

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Top 12 House History Research Supplies

by Houstory Publishing

Researching your home’s history is a lot of fun, but you don’t want to be caught flat-footed if an opportunity to research and collect value information on your property presents itself. In an effort to help out our fellow “Houstorians,” we’ve come up with a list of the top 12 supplies for house history research.

House History Research

 

Notebook/laptop computer: To keep track of everything, of course.

Tape measurer: Try to have one on-hand at all times. Whether it comes to creating a map for your home, or measuring a room – accuracy is of paramount importance.

Camera: A picture is often worth a few thousand words.

Recording device: When conducting interviews, it is helpful to have a device on hand — whether it is a tape recorder or something more sophisticated, such as a digital recorder — that will allow you to record (with permission) the people you speak to along the way.

Large folder: During your research adventures, you’ll likely run across a slew of loose papers/documents that need a home. Eventually, many of these documents can be showcased in your Home History Book, but in the meantime, a folder will do.

Magnifying glass: Tiny print — common in the types of documents you will likely be examining, such as maps or government documents — can strain the eyes.

Tracing paper: For those times when you can’t copy some of the truly historic and fragile documents, or perhaps they are too large.

Pencil: Oftentimes, libraries and historical archives will not let you use a pen on the premises if the documents they house are too fragile or old.

Stapler: Keep the loose stuff organized.

Flashlight: The home historians sometimes has to follow the research trail to dark nooks and crannies in a home to dig up elusive information.

Sharp knife: Need a sample of wallpaper, or paint? This can help.

Mirror: If you are trying to explore hard-to-see areas, such as under an appliance or behind a wall – mirrors can be invaluable.

Is this list complete? What do you like to use when you research your home’s history? For more information on researching your house histories, visit www.homehistorybook.com

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Holiday houses, holiday heirlooms

by Houstory Publishing

By Dan Hiestand, Houstory

A few weeks ago, we asked you to send in photos of your favorite holiday heirlooms, or smartly decorated holiday houses. The following is a sampling of a few submissions. If you want us to add a few more, simply e-mail photos to info (at) houstory.com, or post your image to our Facebook page.

christmas, holidays, family heirloom




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NPR’s Planet Money: ‘Stuff’ has a story

by Houstory Publishing

By Dan Hiestand, Houstory

Despite the rain, cold and touch of snow that have set up shop in my community of Eugene, Oregon over the past month, I still enjoy a good bike ride. It was on one of these recent treks, zipping along a trail that shadows the snow-fed waters of the Willamette River, that I heard an fascinating story on National Public Radio’s Planet Money.

Planet Money, T-Shirt, NPR, Houstory

Now, I’m the first to admit that the show’s major topic — the economy — is not typically something I’m interested in. Investments, taxes, mortgages…these are all a great big “yuck” in my book. However, the program has turned these seemingly mundane subjects into ear candy by revealing the hidden stories within the stories. In a lot of ways, I think of it like Freakonomics for your ears.

And like any good storyteller, they put a digestible (human) spin on complex issues. The program segment that recently grabbed my attention was a piece about the manufacturing of a T-shirt. Interestingly, the story protagonist was the T-Shirt itself: Planet Money ordered two sets of the shirt adorned with the show’s logo, and followed the garment’s creation from start (cotton fields in the southern United States) to production (factories in Columbia and Bangladesh) to finish (the customer). One shirt was made for men, the other for women.

Preserve, conserve, #nomorestuff

 

The story is laden with on-the-scene anecdotes, and peppered with astonishing facts, including:

* 13,000 bales of cotton is the equivalent of 9.4 million T-shirts.

* There are 6 miles of yarn in a single Planet Money T-shirt

* The workers who made the Planet Money T-shirt in Bangladesh were making about $80 a month

* 32 people make about 80 shirts per hour in Bangladesh. One sewing line in Colombia had eight people and made about 140 T-shirts per hour.

These facts, coupled with personal, insightful interviews with folks who work the production lines, provided a reminder that essentially everything we own has a creation story that includes actual human beings. I don’t know about you, but for me it’s way too easy to forget that.

What does this have to do with Houstory, The Home History Book archival journal and The Heirloom Registry? Well, nothing and everything.

The nothing is pretty obvious, so we’ll skip that.

Now, onto the everything. This month, as part of its  “No More Stuff/Preserve. Conserve” campaign, Houstory is asking you to slow down, and truly consider what you buy during this season of consumption and giving because not all products are created — or valued — equally.

As this story suggests, product manufacturing is a complicated business. Good (job creation, increased economic opportunities) combines with bad (environmental degradation, unsafe working conditions) more often than not.

I am not proposing that all consumption is bad, or that consumers should dump all that modern life offers and live in a Hobbit Hole. What I’m saying is that this complicated relationship should, at the very least, make us pause before we simply make a purchase online or at the store.

Well, enough about Hobbit Holes and T-shirts. Check out the Planet Money show, and let us know what you think!

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Want to make your grandma mad at you?

by Houstory Publishing

By Dan Hiestand, Houstory Marketing Director

Below is a picture of my grandma. We called her Gommy. Some of you may remember her from a post I wrote about a cookbook that was handed down to me that she was featured in. I thought this picture was priceless.

I’m encouraging you to heed Gommy’s words: Save the stories behind your family heirlooms. Take advantage of being around family members during the holidays who can fill in the blanks regarding the precious pieces of your family history. Your distant heirs will thank you for it someday.

grandma, heirlooms

 

 

Need to get in grandma’s good graces? Simply follow the recipe below.

 

family history, heirlooms, family heirlooms

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Share your homes for the holidays

by Houstory Publishing

Home and the holidays.

The two concepts just seem to go together effortlessly, don’t they? Kind of like awkward conversation and once-per-year family dinners. But it all adds up to the same thing: family history and tradition.

family heirloom, holidays

This year, we are asking you to share some of your family traditions — specifically your holiday family heirlooms and your beautifully (or at least uniquely) decorated houses. Let the Houstory Nation know what is happening out there.

Do you have a favorite leg lamp you break out every December? Perhaps a cookbook or family ornament? Or maybe you’ve spiffed up your house into a frenzy of wintery celebration?

Show us what you have, and we will share them with other Houstorians.

Simply e-mail photos to info@houstory.com by Dec. 15, and we will try to put them up on the Houstory Hearth sometime before Christmas, and share them with our social media audience.

Alright, now that’s out of the way, full disclosure: I’m totally going to steal the following from Cleveland.com, who are doing a similar activity. Why re-invent the wheel, right?

Here are tips they suggest, and we suggest, too, for taking great photos.

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Be sure to include the full names of the people in your photo and the communities where they live. We also need to know who took the picture.

Here are some basic tips that should help make your shots rise to the top!

  1. If you’re outside shooting, it’s always best to have the sun at your back, or maybe off to your side. If it’s behind your subject, the photos won’t look good. If the front of the building faces east you’ll want to shoot early in the day, or morning, if it faces west, then later in the day.
  2. When you’re inside shooting you should have the windows behind you, not behind your subject. If you can see a window behind your subject, you need to move to the other side.
  3. Close ups are good and make very dramatic shots!
  4. If you get a variety of these three things then you’ll have short photo essay that tells the whole story of the event. An overall picture sets the scene, a medium shot , and then a close up tell a powerful story.

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Looking forward to your contributions!

- Mike and Dan

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Buying ‘stuff’? Try an alternative this season

by Houstory Publishing

By Dan Hiestand, Houstory Marketing Director

When I was younger — particularly in college — I used to think the greatest thing in the world was the dollar store. After all, where else could you buy a grocery cart full of household supplies and groceries on a budget?

Need bathroom cleaner?

Check.

Peanut butter and jelly?

Check.

Cheap plastic gadget I thought was so cool and so essential that I had to buy it, but was forgotten about by the time I got home and was either given away or tossed in the garbage (and eventually the landfill) within a year?

Check.

This isn’t a post to bash dollar stores. On the contrary, discount stores are an essential component for many people looking to save a buck on vital household items.

Rather, this is a request to stop and consider what we choose to consume because ultimately it does matter. Regardless of your position on global warming, the environment or everything in between, I think we can all agree that waste is never a good thing.

no more stuff, #nomorestuff

Last year, we ran a holiday campaign that encouraged people to re-think the relationship they have with the objects and things that surround them before they head out shopping for things they may not really need or even truly want.

The campaign’s name: “No More Stuff/Preserve. Conserve.”

Preserve, conserve, #nomorestuff

We’ve gained a lot more followers since that initial campaign, so instead of repeating what I said, I’ll simply direct you to my words from last December. I would encourage you to take a look.

Then, let us know what you think.

Do you agree? Is too much stuff a problem? Do you believe that we are over-hyping this? Let’s have a conversation.

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Houstory Deals of the Week: Nov. 25

by Houstory Publishing

Just in time for the holidays, this is our first installment of the Houstory “Deals of the Week.” Make sure to check back weekly for more deals. Simply click on the image below to be taken to our storefront. From there, enter the discount code in the image to take advantage of these special savings.

112513THR-DOTW

 

112513HHB-DOTW

 

 

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