I’ve kept a diary/small journal for 30 years and decided this year will be my last one. Do any other grans keep one? ?

Since 2000 I have kept a photo year book, with explanatory notes on each page. This is a sort of visual diary that I hope the grandchildren will enjoy in years to come.

I've kept a diary for years as did my mum. It was such a joy reading hers and all the happy memories we had as a family. Lost my mum in 2019. I was so glad that she wrote her diaries.

How lovely to look back over the years - one thing I would have love to have done but having been in a bad marriage years ago I couldn’t chance my ex finding them - or had my family read it

I tried many times when I was younger to keep a diary but always failed miserably.
However, I took early retirement in 2017 and, from the month before I finished work, I have been keeping one of those diaries where you just jot a few lines. To my amazement I have kept it up and I now love looking back each day to see what I was doing in the previous years.

I have box full of travel journals. I have stopped writing these now (before Coronavirus!). Who, really is going to be interested? I’ll read them then Chuck them...

I am always reminded of Dorry’s diary in What Katy Did. Dorry is Katy’s brother, a small boy, six or seven years old. The diary goes something like this:

March 12th Hav rissolved to kepe a jurnal

Then follow four days where he describes what he ate. Then:

March 25th Forgit what did

March 27th Forgit what did

March 29th Played

March 31st Forgit what did

April 1st Hav dissided not to kepe a jurnal enny more.

I have diaries going back to 1964! They have been very useful in writing my autobiography, which I started in the first lockdown and goes up to last Christmas. I have been keeping a fuller journal since 21st March last year.

I've got about two dozen diaries, one dating back as far as 1962.

When reading through them, on the whole, most of what I have written is pretty mundane and not particularly interesting but I am reluctant to just get rid of them. Sometimes I read things that I had forgotten so from that angle they are quite useful but I don't suppose any of my family will be interested in them.

I like creative writing and I don't understand why I didn't use the opportunity to put down my memories, thoughts and opinions on various happenings and issues. There is some mention of momentous current events but far more domestic-type waffle than even I want to read!

I always keep a holiday diary with details of where we've been and what we've seen. I'm in the process of making them into books with the photographs we've taken. I actually started the diaries so that we would be able to remember what the photographs we'd taken (in the days before digital) were of!

Our main library in town suggested that some people might like keeping a Covid diary, rather like the Housewife 49 / mass observation idea in WW2. I started mine last March and it’s been very enjoyable. The library said they might be collected and stored ( like a time capsule) or excerpts might be taken to show different perspectives of the pandemic from across the town. In any event, it has been cathartic and I’ll keep it- just in case it could be useful in ,say, a hundred years time. I have all of my great grandfather’s letters from Australia, written before the First World War when he was out there building the railways. They are fascinating and I used them for a project for history when at university
in the 70s.

I kept a detailed diary describing a family holiday in France and Switzerland in 1955. I illustrated it with postcards bought at the time, and a few photos. I still love reading it - an insight into the times, my family and my 15-year-old self.

I have kept a diary since 1963 when I left school. I keep them in shoeboxes for each decade. Only write what I have been up to and where I've been, no inner feelings. Not much in it this last year!! Its very handy to check when something happened or when you went somewhere on holiday. It was good to look back on my early days of motherhood and compare with my daughter-so different then! Expect my kids will chuck them when I'm gone.

I have diaries from 1947, not many entries until the 1960s when I was very much involved with theWomen Institute. During our travels around Europe for twelve years I wrote in exercise books. Every thing about camp sites, weather, prices in different countries and people we met. Until my husband died. After that only appointments and details of holidays and trips to visit friends and relatives home and abroad. Now every day is alike as I am housebound so there is no point.

No, but so wish I had!

Must be in the air! An old school friend has been sharing hers from the 1960s in which we all appear, fascinating to hear about events we’d forgotten or remember differently. Mine were always discontinued by the end of January ?

In the 60's I kept a diary and then on and for and never for a whole year. Now I sometimes write entries on a document on my computer.

I recently had cause to look for an entry, an author is writing about the live of my great aunt. I attended her funeral with my sister and mother. I have an entry for that day. I'm so sorry it was only a line or two but we know just a few details more than the place it was held and that's nice.

I used to but when I go back through them I can’t read my writing
I have been writing a record each day during lockdowns.

I didn't know my beloved mum kept a diary, it was so extremely upsetting when we read it. My father has not been a great husband and unfortunately we lost my mum.
I too keep a diary of sorts but I only write in it when I'm at my wits end. My husband too drives me insane and I have to write it down the stupidness of it all. Does make upsetting reading when ypu read it back and find it's been bad for so long. Who knows I may make the break told him today.

I only keep a diary when I travel.

I did keep the kind you do, as a teenager, but gave it up because I realised that my mother was reading it. I knew this was wrong of her, but could think of no way of saying so without an almighty row involving the entire family.

It is obviously up to you whether you go on or not and what you do with the diaries themselves.

Have you considered donating them to a national library or a museum? I think if you did so, you would be entitled to state that they should not be made available to the public for sixty years or so, if you want to avoid the risk of people mentioned in them recognising themselves.

Might your daughter be happy to have them one day?

I have two diaries written by my grandmother, the first shortly after she was widowed as she wanted her daughters (my mother and aunt) to have something to remember their father by - he died when they were both under two. The second she wrote when she realised she had terminal cancer, explaining why she had decided against continuing treatment. This is hard reading, but did make her loss easier for us all.

I have about 5 from my mother . They are from her later years after my father died . I have never say down and read them from cover to cover . They are kept in my wardrobe, and sometimes when they catch my eye I might turn to the same date in one of them. They contain things like
" Caught the bus into town, had a wander, it's been a very sunny day. Hellsbelles phoned in the evening for a chat "
They bring a smile to my face , but it's emotional to read as well. I know my own children would not really care for them, and I keep telling myself I need to read them and then get rid but I can't quite bring myself to do so. I've also come across a few times when she mentions me as in " if you are reading this " . Just typing that makes me want to cry, so I'm obviously emotionally attached to them !

Please don't bin them. In the future when a member of the family wants to build a family tree your diaries will be very precious. I have had diaries over the years, never wrote in them regularly but when I wanted to record something for myself. I look back sometimes at them and am surprised or sad at what I read. Very interesting. I know my grandchildren, now at university have always had their say as to what they DON'T want me to throw away. That's even down to little things they used to play with when they were little and came to stay. I have a trunk stored in my daughter's garage and she said, mum, can I throw that away. There's a lot of rubbish in it. I said no, it's not rubbish and the only people who can decide what should be thrown are my two grandchildren. They also have power of my several hundred books in my will. Because at the age of 12 or so they decided I had to put that in the will otherwise 'you know what mum will do' . Yes she'd send them to the local charity shop. You'd be surprised what they value, if you were fortunate enough to have them stay when they were young.

I used to keep diaries and wish I had continued.
A 'one off' one, from 1986 and then a run of them, from 1990 - 1996. No idea why I stopped as each Christmas I asked for a diary for the following year.
Maybe technology was improving and I just thought it more exciting than handwriting a daily diary.
Silly me!

Stopped when I was 13. My mum found it and I got slapped legs and grounded for weeks. It was all made up but she didn’t believe me. ??
But, having read your comments on doing it for grandkids that has got my interest! ?

Ydoc - your post made me sad. Here are some for you and I hope things improve for you very soon x

My first diary was in 1946 when i was 9 years old and I still keep a diary 75 years later. Started off a line a day now a thick journal. They will probably all be thrown out when I'm gone but if I ever start to read them which I do now and then it is like reading a novel lots of things I have forgotten all about. I couldn't bear to throw them out.