Documenting family heirlooms

[ColdSyphon]

Hello chaps, a bit of background for you. I am 29 and an only child, I have no other family close by, so it will be down to me to sort out the affairs of my Mum when her day comes. Unfortunately my dear old Mum is getting on a bit (will be 70 at the end of the year, although it's not her age that's the concern) and her overall health isn't wonderful, stuff is in order at the moment but you never know with these things.

We have quite a few family heirlooms which have a bit of a story to them and my Mum has asked that some be passed onto other family members and that I keep hold of some. I am looking for a method of documenting these items in such a way that each one has a picture with some text. I had been thinking of just using simple like PowerPoint, but wondered whether anyone had a better suggestion?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

[Truckosaurus]

Word processor document saved as a PDF, can be easily viewed by anyone.

Video (even if just on a phone or laptop camera) your mother discussing each item, as well as hand written notes.

Might be worth contacting your insurers asking what level of documentation they would want for high value items (eg. photos from multiple angles).

[Spare tyre]

What about wiring the blurb about each one onto a bit of a4, then filming it with the item in front

Could even have a discussion on film as to where each thing is going. You can then out it on YouTube unlisted so people cannot find it

[Robbo 27]

Consider a journal, hand written, you might even include a family tree.

I was talking to a historian and they agonise about how to document information for the future, their experts think that long term our computer information will not be readable for the future computers,

[ali_kat]

I wish we had thought to do this!

[Foliage]

If your mum is willing set up a video camera, (apparently ipads are pretty good for this sort of thing) and get her to talk about each of the items, then pop it on youtube as a private video, you could video the item and pop some captioning on it too.