Travel diary downsizing stress

As family members passed away, I came into possession of the world travel diaries of:

• My great-grandmother: Greta Miriam Chandler Adams (1894-1988)
• My grandmother: Helen Chandler Adams Ingham (1919-2003)
• Mom: Mary Margaret Ingham Otto (1948-2017)

They've been taking up a fair amount of space in a drawer. But I really must continue downsizing, and what am I supposed to do with them? It's kind of overwhelming and stressful, to be honest. (And, yes, I know this is a First World Problem.)

A big issue is that much of Greta's and Helen's handwriting is nearly indecipherable to me. And that's saying a lot, because I've prided myself on deciphering the old cursive handwriting on many postcards and other pieces of ephemera over the years for Papergreat. I could probably decipher most of it eventually, but I'm not sure if it's worth the work, and I'm not exactly swimming in time. This may be unfair, but 90% of it is along the lines of "Seas were calm today," "Had lunch with a nice couple from Topeka" and "Walked around the city and bought a pair of shoes." Going through pages and pages and pages of that is not how I envision my days. On the other hand, though, it's family history.

I'm going to try my best to sort through them, keep just a handful, and put the rest on eBay as a bulk lot. If the diaries can make someone else happy and I have less STUFF in drawers and closets and boxes, I think that's a win-win. 

In the meantime, here are some photos from the sorting ...

In the end, I went with about a 50-50 split, with half of the travel diaries going onto eBay (below, left) and the others going back in the drawer for now (below, right). I'm OK with that as progress. I'm keeping all of Mom's and among the others I'm keeping is a travel diary Greta kept in the summer of 1915, when she was just 21 and had much better handwriting. That will be well worth reading, I think.