Working on a Household Inventory

One of the things I used to love doing as a young man was household inventories.  I realize that this sounds like an odd activity for a teenager and yes, it is.  But still, I loved doing it.  It all started when Aunt Sara passed away.  Mom was her executor and among Aunt Sara's papers were 2 household inventories that she had done.  One was of her own personal belongings in the old homeplace and the other was the belongings left from her parents in the homeplace.  I was utterly fascinated with this concept.  I loved reading them.  I loved learning the history of the pieces...where they came from, who they had belonged to, etc.  It was a wonderful piece of history.

So, I was determined to do the same thing.  I cannot remember if I started with our house or with Grandmother's.  But I took note of almost everything and wrote it down.  Now, I didn't do things like clothes and household items like cleaning supplies and toiletries.  This was an inventory for records purposes.  I would gather all the information that I could about a piece and notate it. I believed, and still do, that it is extremely important to know something's history.  To me that makes it worth more, definitely personally and historically and possibly even financially.  Doing research on items that I did not have background on was fun.  I learned many different styles of furniture and names of patterns of glass, china and silver.  

I would spend hours, days even, doing this.  I eventually did an inventory for Aunt Billie as well.  And these inventories came in handy when both she and Grandmother passed as it gave record to what was in the house. I felt like I was accomplishing something both for myself and for them.  I think I have copies of all of these somewhere.  If I can't find them, then most of the information is still stored in my brain.  I spent so much time doing it that I remember a great deal of it.  I also had a cousin, Isabel, that I have her inventory she did somewhere as well.  Hers was for appraisal purposes for things she was selling upon her death.  Still, it's fun to read and see what she owned since I don't remember much about her house LOL

Recently, I started working on some inventory of my own.  I started with a set of china.  The purpose of this particular inventory is because I am hoping to pass this set on to a member of the family and want them, whoever they may be, to know what their getting.  But, I had such a great time in the process of doing this one.  I had almost forgotten how much fun it is and now much I enjoy it.  I should translate this into some kind of business...except I'm very slow and thorough LOL  But I enjoyed the research and information getting.  And I hope to do more of it.

That is all.