The House of Many Hats

My husband's grandfather passed away recently.  Tony blogged about him here.  My husband's inheritance?  A lot of hats.  Okay, he got a whole lot from his grandfather in life too, but the physical stuff that is affecting my life are these hats.

I haven't actually counted them.  There are quite a few.  Currently there are 4 huge bags (not little bags, big yard bags) filled with them sitting in my living room. 

My kids' only memory of their great-grandfather is going into his hat room (yes, there was a room in his house filled with them) and picking out a hat for a parade that went through the house.  They saw the hats and immediately remembered.  The hats are a huge legacy, and there's no way that they are just going away.

So, we have a lot of hats.  They can't stay in bags in my living room...what now?  I am sitting here trying to figure out what to do with the hats.  I want a house with order and less chaos (I know, I'm dreaming), but those hats can easily take over.  I just don't know what to do.

I am debating the idea of using my mom's room.  Many of you may know that my mom moved out a little over a year ago, but the thing is she still keeps a room here.  She's said she likes the idea of us using the room as a spare bedroom and putting a TV in there or whatever.  She just wants to be able to keep a set of clothes over here, so she doesn't need much closet space.  I am going to use her closet for linens as soon as soon as I get to organizing that room (in case you don't know, I'm organizing one space a week in my house and blogging about it here).  I have this color scheme in mind for that room and it didn't include the multicolored mass of outrageous hats (actually, not all of them are outrageous...but most are).  I just don't know if I want to go there...and I'm not sure my mom would be so thrilled either.

My favorite idea so far has been to make a collage of the kids wearing each hat and putting that up somewhere and storing the hats somehow somewhere for later use.  My husband loves these hats and really, they are very much his type of thing, so they aren't going to just disappear, but storing them is probably an option.

So the debate in my head begins.  What do I do?  If I do put them up on display in there, how do I display them?  If I only display a few, which ones should I choose?  What do I do with the rest?  Should I just take pictures of them and make them all just sit in a closet somewhere?

So...what do you think?  What should I do with all the hats?