Sounds like hell doesn’t it. I am in the midst of opening every single book in the house to find those that my mother had used to put things in; such as old letters, ephemera of all kinds, anything important. I knew she had written in a few but even I am surprised at the number of poems she has written inside back covers, front covers and any empty pages in her books.
Of course it is all important to scan in and keep a digital record as none of these things will last out the next thousand years (and who knows maybe even digital media won’t) but it all reminds me of how often we never had the money to buy much paper – the life blood of a writer.
When we lived in North Devon we stopped on a drive when we found a parcel on the road side. Literally something that fell off a delivery lorry. Inside the wrapping was thousands of sheets of pale yellow A4 paper – which could hold about 300 or so typed words. Not only was that paper used for years it produced the first draft of her second book. So important a gift did this paper seem that I found an unused sheet in her work and dutifully replaced it, as it brought back a host of memoirs.
I suspect we all have something we remember like this and none of it is gold. It will be something far more important.