4 ms·

First thing I did was take a bunch of photos. One of the things that had meaning wasn't the individual items, but the assemblage of the whole: the choices mad

by femto 4y ago

First thing I did was take a bunch of photos. One of the things that had meaning wasn't the individual items, but the assemblage of the whole: the choices made in the arrangement of tools in the workshop, projects being worked on, the "look and feel" of the house. After that I felt I could "disassemble" things without losing too much: in the process getting rid of cruft and keeping other stuff. A big part of the job was "reverse engineering" the things the deceased knew but I didn't, and I could no longer ask about. That random key? Can it go out, or is it irreplaceable and belongs to something that matters? In my mind the best thing a person can do to ease the clean up is leave current documentation. Little things like labeling keys and making sure documents have dates. The things in your head that others can't know.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
The article itself illustrates the photo-aspect of it. There are some very touching photos of personal items in the article. No doubt the photos themselves (especially artfully shot) will give some of the same emotional fulfillment.
maerF0x0 4y ago
> Can it go out, or is it irreplaceable and belongs to something that matters? I wonder if there is such a thing as digitizing said keys? Like maybe a 3d scanner could archive it incase you find a mysterious locked box later?
- corobo 4y ago
  Use a camera You can recreate keys from images
  - maerF0x0 4y ago
    surely this cant be true for most keys? I mean I'm sure for regular house keys... But car keys, bike lock keys, padlock keys? if true then TIL!
    - corobo 4y ago
      Admittedly I was only thinking of like safes and lockboxes, stuff you could probably open without the key anyway given a bit of time I doubt there's any forgotten houses or cars in my family's junk collection in any case and I have no use for old bike locks and padlocks, they'd binned anyway whether I found a matching key or not
    - alexjm 4y ago
      If you have a decent photo of the side of the key, you can make a pretty good guess at the bitting code, which is essentially the instructions for making a copy. Here's an example of the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoRyv4ANhM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoRyv4ANhM4

by femto 4y ago

JKCalhoun 4y ago

The article itself illustrates the photo-aspect of it. There are some very touching photos of personal items in the article. No doubt the photos themselves (especially artfully shot) will give some of the same emotional fulfillment.

maerF0x0 4y ago

> Can it go out, or is it irreplaceable and belongs to something that matters? I wonder if there is such a thing as digitizing said keys? Like maybe a 3d scanner could archive it incase you find a mysterious locked box later?

corobo 4y ago
Use a camera You can recreate keys from images
- maerF0x0 4y ago
  surely this cant be true for most keys? I mean I'm sure for regular house keys... But car keys, bike lock keys, padlock keys? if true then TIL!
  - corobo 4y ago
    Admittedly I was only thinking of like safes and lockboxes, stuff you could probably open without the key anyway given a bit of time I doubt there's any forgotten houses or cars in my family's junk collection in any case and I have no use for old bike locks and padlocks, they'd binned anyway whether I found a matching key or not
  - alexjm 4y ago
    If you have a decent photo of the side of the key, you can make a pretty good guess at the bitting code, which is essentially the instructions for making a copy. Here's an example of the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoRyv4ANhM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoRyv4ANhM4