When is it time to sort through heirlooms and photos

When is the time right to sort through photos and heirlooms and elicit family stories from your loved one?

It is never too early to start going through old family photos and writing the names on the backs of the photos using a No. 2 pencil - no pen, according to Lindsay Rice, executive director of the Mount Prospect Historical Society.

If you are the parent, dedicate an afternoon or a weekend when you have nothing else planned to doing this. It would truly be a gift to your children and to posterity. Just because you know the names of the people pictured doesn't mean that your children will know them. When you have the time to go through photos leisurely, this can be an enjoyable trip down memory lane.

If you are the adult child of an aging parent, schedule a visit and make a point of going through the albums with your loved one, asking them to identify people and events in the photos. This should be a fun activity and may elicit some great stories that you might want to record! Remember that all of those photos and slides are tangible reminders of your lives together. They need to be treasured.

The best way to preserve any special slides you come across is by using a slide scanner, Rice said. They can be purchased for between $40 and $150 at major stores like Best Buy and can be connected to your PC using a USB cable.

Those old 8 mm films of Christmas mornings and first steps can be preserved onto DVDs by photo services at places like Walgreens.

As for prints, they can be scanned using a flatbed scanner that is connected to your computer. Plan to store them as jpg or tiff files, using a resolution of 400, Rice said. Keep in mind that jpg files take up much less room on your computer than tiff files do. Purchase an external hard drive if you plan to store a lot of tiff files.

The originals can then be stored between polyester or polypropylene sheet protectors which are available from archival stores and prevent yellowing and degrading. The sheets should then be stored in a safe, climate-controlled place where flooding is highly unlikely.

If a photo is curled when you find it, you can flatten it under a heavy book, as long as the photo is still malleable, according to Rice. But if the photo seems to be hardened and permanently curled (especially if it has been stored in a tube), you probably want to consult a professional preservationist.

All of these tips also apply to paper documents like birth and marriage certificates, Rice said.

And if you want to share those priceless photos and interesting documents with family members, consider downloading them onto CDs and mailing them to siblings, cousins and other interested family members. If you are more internet and technologically savvy, you can also consider sharing them through an internet sharing site like Dropbox (www.dropbox.com/home) or Google Drive (www.google.com/drive).

"The basic accounts are free, but the price increases if you choose to get more storage space," Rice said.

This would also be a great time to consider doing an oral history with your parent. Pull out the old tape recorder or do it on your smartphone, but record your parent's history, stories and voice. This will become an invaluable "heirloom" for the family.

When you ask the right, open-ended questions, you will probably collect a wealth of family stories. Besides the usual: where were you born, where did you live, who were your parents and where did you go to school questions, ask some more unusual ones.

What is your earliest childhood memory? What kind of games did you play? What was your favorite toy? Did you have family chores? What were they? Did you receive an allowance? If you can't imagine asking these questions of your parents because it acknowledges the fact that they won't always be around, encourage your child to ask them as part of a school project. Grandparents are always eager to help a grandchild.

Other great questions include: Do you remember any fads from your youth? What were they? Popular hairstyles? What world events had the most impact on you? Describe a typical family dinner. Describe how you celebrated the holidays. How is the world different today than when you were a child?

Finally, talk to your parent about the items in their home. Ask where unusual items came from, especially those that appear to be handmade. Openly or surreptitiously write down the answers so that your family knows the history of the various items and makes sure that true family heirlooms are not lost.

If you feel you can broach the subject, ask which items the parent most treasures and would not want the family to lose. This information will be invaluable when the parent passes away or is no longer able to live in their home and decisions about the disposition of individual items need to be made. This will help you decide what should be sold, what should be donated and what should be distributed to family members.