Storing pen pal letters?

[Paul-in-SF]

A couple of questions for folks who write letters to other people on a regular basis. First, do you keep the letters you receive? (Sub-question: for a limited time, or effectively forever?). Second, if you have more than a couple of people you receive letters from, how do you store and manage your correspondence? 

 

I've had three pen pals, going on close to a year for a couple of them. So far I have just bundled them (letters inside the envelopes) in rubber bands and kept them in a folder. Pretty soon that's going to stop working, so I need to think of something else. I could make room in my file drawers for separate folders (difficult, they're pretty stuffed already). I'm not sure what other options I can think of. Ideas?

[LizEF]

You could digitize them.  This may lose things like ink color, but will preserve them well if you're good at filing and backing up electronically.

 

You could slide them (opened, probably) into sheet protectors and put them in a binder on a shelf.  The only thing I don't like about this is that you either have to lay it flat (most shelves don't support this well) or the sheet protectors and contents "droop" on the side away from the binding.

 

(File cabinet would have been my first suggestion - perhaps it's time for you to sort through the cabinets and do some shredding... A variant on this is to put them in a banker's box and stow that in a closet somewhere.)

[Paul-in-SF]

Thanks, I like the sheet protectors idea. I think I could find something at my local Japanese stationery store with built-in sheet protectors that wouldn't sag. I do have shelf space for something like that.

 

I don't have a scanner, and anyway digitizing feels too impersonal to me. If I want to keep anything, it's the actual artifacts. 

 

3 minutes ago, LizEF said:

perhaps it's time for you to sort through the cabinets and do some shredding...

You had to go there. I was thinking the same thing as I typed. 

[LizEF]

34 minutes ago, Paul-in-SF said:

You had to go there.

Sorry. (I ought to go there myself - there being my filing cabinet...)

[brokenclay]

I have a regular boring manila folder for each correspondent. I do scan the letters I write and put them, together with the letter I was answering, into the manila folder. Every time I write a letter, I move that person's folder to the front, which gives me an idea of who I haven't heard from in a long time, and I'll sometimes send that person a postcard or a note (which I don't keep a copy of) just saying that I'm thinking of them. Sometimes pen pals just drop away, and that's ok, too.

 

The only reason I keep a copy of my own letters is to try to avoid embarrassing myself by telling the same stories over again.

[Paul-in-SF]

22 minutes ago, brokenclay said:

The only reason I keep a copy of my own letters is to try to avoid embarrassing myself by telling the same stories over again.

I've had that worry, but I haven't started keeping copies of my letters (yet). I haven't been at this very long, so I don't have too many letters to remember (yet). Also I take a lot of cues from the letter I'm responding to, and I try to keep all my stories about current things since my last letter. My final out is that I apologized in advance, early on, if I ever repeated myself because I'm writing to different people. 

[Cedar]

I have divided notebooks with a tab for each pen pal. When I reply to their letter I have that letter in front of me and answer or comment on what they wrote. Before I mail it I make notes in the divided notebooks of what I wrote when I replied. I try to keep the notes as short as possible but cover the main points. This works for me especially if I haven't heard from someone for quite a while. My notes jog my memory of what was discussed and where we left off. 

 

For the letters I received I put them in a lidded box (I think it was from a box of boots so had the right width for #10 envelopes filed horizontally) grouped by person in alphabetical order. When I decide that a pen pal has dropped off (first I cry, curse or shrug....jk) then I purge their letters from the box and tear their pages out of the notebook. Out with the old, in with the new (hopefully there will be new ones!). Or if the box gets too full I discard the oldest letters from each pen pal. I had tried reading them again before I discarded them but I found that after a year or two the content was no longer relevant and, therefore, not as interesting as when I first received it. It was time for it to go.

 

I tried copying my letters but then I would have to access them and read them before I wrote my next reply. I considered that too time consuming. The snag is that whether it is copied or notes I'd still have to go back several mailed replies to totally avoid repetition. 

 

Carol

[flyingfox]

After 30+ years of penpalling, I definitely accumulated a lot of letters.

 

When I receive letters, I put that on a holder thing, until I write the reply. Then put the letter in a plastic basket by my writing desk. When the basket becomes full, I go through the letters, and make pile of the letters from the same writers. Then I pick one envelope per writer, usually the largest/ most sturdy one (or with the prettiest stamps and stickers), and stuff as many letters as possible in that envelope, then discard other envelopes (cut the stamps out for my collection and shred the address parts). Usually I can get through the year with two rounds of “letter consolidation/ envelope purge”.

 

At the end of a year, usually when I am tired of Holiday card writing/ other holiday activities and want some simple tasks to feel like I am accomplishing something, I go through all the letters again, and try letter consolidation one last time, then write the year on the front of the envelope. There is another box (one of those banker’s cardboard box from the office product store) for the letters from recent years. I looks through them, and see if I can consolidate letters from multiple years (sometimes possible, depending on the pace of correspondence.) I also pay special attention to the letters from 3-4 years ago. If I haven’t heard from the writer in that time frame, I figure- chances are that I won’t hear from them again. I read those letters one last time, thank the writer silently, and discard them (I might save very special memento/ photos, but that’s a case-by-case basis.) Once THAT box becomes full, which is once every 5 years or so, I bring out another box like that and repeat the process. I have two such banker’s cardboard boxes.
 

I also have two large plastic container boxes for old letters that I go through when I feel like walking down the memory lane. I actually lost two cardboard boxes-ful of letters when there was a flood in the basement storage room several years ago, and I use plastic boxes for anything that I store in the basement now.... Contents of those are less likely to be discarded at this point. I mean- even if one of my long term pal decides to stop writing to me, I wouldn’t have a heart to throw the letters away.... Some of my pals and I are writing to each other for like 25 years, and I have met some of them, so that they are more like friends who live in far away places. Even if the friendship ends, it doesn’t change the impact they had in my life and the richness they brought. I am probably adding another “long term”plastic box in the near future, but am trying to accomplish that by decluttering/ emptying out a box of random stuff, rather than buying a new one....
 

Then I have a very special “forever” box. That’s a plastic box that contains the letters that I will keep forever (and hopefully will be stuffed in my coffin when I die, at least I always ask my husband to do so, and hope he will outlive me.) That box contains letters from my Mom, grandma, special childhood friends, a note from my crush in HS days, and a very dear penpal who passed away. I also keep some super-special letters I have received over the course of years, like my friends’ wedding invitations, baby announcements, and celebrating other life’s milestone moments.