For photos and certificates, I'd take them out of the frames and put them all in a book. You can get clear plastic pockets to slip them into and then put them in a binder, and then you'd have a book of his achievements. You could include the magazine articles and newspaper articles as well.

Plaques are a little tougher! But you could take a good photo of each plaque, put the photos in the book, and then get rid of the plaque, if he's willing. Then you'd have a book (or two!) chronicling his achievements that would take up very little space compared to trying to display everything.

This is what scrapbooks are for. (And it's really not necessary to do "scrapbooking" when you put a scrapbook together. What a time suck!)

If it were me, I'd say that time is what's most important, and that it's not actually that likely that anyone is going to go back and refer to old clippings. So I'd probably do my "scrapbooking" in flat box. And I'd consider tossing them as they got to be more than 5 years old.

Page protectors would be fast, but I think I'd be tempted to save a little money and glue stuff onto a scrapbook page.
http://store.scrapbook.com/gb-gyes.html

If I thought it was really important, you could spray it to be acid-free. But that's more work!.
http://www.misterart.com/crafts/book-binding/krylon-make-it-acid-free-paper-protectant-spray.html

There's also the "scan it" possibility (you could scan the plaques, even, instead of photographing--you'd get a clearer image that way). But I'd worry a bit about changing formats and storage media, depending on how long you wanted to keep the stuff.

(also, often plaques are a piece of carved plastic attached to a wooden base; you could keep the plastic and toss the wooden base; that would make it thin enough to slip it into a page protector or stick it to a thick scrapbook page)

Thanks, y'all. Talley Sue, I had no idea they made a spray that neutralized acid (to a degree). How cool is that. Some of the items that are worth saving are newspaper clippings, so I need to look into that.

Your comment about putting it all in a flat box is so true, Good idea. It isn't something we are going to keep out on the coffee table. My goal is a level of preservation that will allow his grandchildren to be aware of some of the things he did.

Your comment also reminds me of something you said several years ago in another thread that I took to heart You said to make it easy to put things away because when you want it, you'll be willing to make the effort to get it, but having to make an effort to put something away often meant it didn't get done.

Newspaper doesn't hold up well over time, if it can be exposed to air. Photocopy the articles to preserve them better. Be sure to include the part of the page that has the date.

Congrats to your DH for being such an "honorable" guy!

If you only want to preserve the info, maybe scan the awards plaques on the computer, and print them out and stick them in the flat box.

Then toss the plaque itself.

If you decide to start using the scanner for this, it might be worth it to spend a little time making sure the scanner is set up to be easy-peasy to use (mine is, mostly: put the item on the scanner push a button, click on the file, type in the name, click "go").
It really wouldn't take that long to set up the routine and shortcuts--20 minutes, maybe? and would make the subsequent scan&print operations really fast.

Also put the box somewhere that's somewhat easy to get to as well.

I have a Mac, and so I'd put an alias/shortcut to the target file in the sidebar of the window, or on the desktop so it's fast to browse to it. Anything you can do to reduce the number of clicks, etc., would speed that up.

This post was edited by talley_sue_nyc on Wed, Sep 24, 14 at 15:34

Thanks, annkh. He was a visionary in his profession (he even has an award saying that - LOL!)

talley sue, good idea about scanning and printing the plaques. As to pitching them, he'll have to be on the other side of the grass before I can do that.

DH has been retired fully for 7 years and yesterday I found a stack of those pink call back slips that offices used to use! It wasn't like they were from the POTUS or anything. Just "Joe called. Please call him back." Fortunately, DH was on the golf course. Those went in the trash and it got taken out before he returned!

Well, maybe you can scan the plaques and put them in a scrapbook/document box for him, and box up the plaques w/ a label that says "plaques (all are scanned into scrapbooks)," and then when the time comes (downsizing for a retirement home, or something), they'll be easy to toss.