In every family, someone ends up with “the stuff.” It is the goal of The Family Curator to inspire, enlighten, and encourage other family curators in their efforts to preserve and share their own family treasures.

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Entries in family archive (1)

Wednesday
Sep282011

An Accumulation of Archives?

I'm proposing a new collective noun for my current state of affairs.

We've run into the time of life when older relatives seem to be passing away at an average of about one every four months. The hardest to bear was certainnly losing my mom in 2010, but in the past fifteen months we've also lost two aunts and an uncle. Each wonderful, quirky, beloved relative left more than memories behind. I'm talking about the inevitable "stuff" of life.

Before 2010 my husband and I had also become the custodians of six other estates, bringing our grand total of family archives to ten. What would you call it? An embarrassment of riches?

If archives were ants, we would have an army of archives.

Maybe archives behave more like elephants, taking up space in our lives. A herd of archives?

Of course, archives seem to be multiplying like rabbits. A bury of archives? (I do feel buried at times). A trip of archives? (Seems like a wild trip, too, man). A warren of archives? (Describing my overflowing closets?)

Archives appear quiet, but can be as demanding as a hungry cat. A nusiance of archives?

Or as relentless as a gnats. A swarm of archives?

Is there a collective noun that indicates sheer mass? Overwhelming numbers?

My mind boggles at an implausibility of gnus or a generation of vipers.

Multiple archives certainly can seem larger than the elephants in the room. Maybe hippopotami would be more appropriate. I think I like the image of a crash of archives or even a bloat of archives. Either would fit my current accumulation of archives.