I’ve kept cherished old photos – way too many. The far left photo shows my uncle in California, whom my (Michigan) parents visited on their honeymoon – with my dad’s dour-faced parents! Mom’s on the right. Funny but its gotta go. I’ll keep my brothers and I on New Year’s Day.
Scanning and digitizing offers an option, but when I’m in ‘the home’, I’ll want a physical book to leaf through. My solution to date finds me on the couch while watching TV, plowing through the eight or ten big, full, plastic bins of photos, carefully selecting the best and brightest and pitching the others. I started with my childhood, which is easier. I have no clue who the dapper gentleman is in the montage above. It’s in postcard form, with nothing written on the back. He’ll go into a postcard pile. I took the full Creative Memories route while the boys were in grade school and those albums are keepsakes. In later years we enjoyed hosting their air-soft parties and sleepovers, and big birthday gatherings. Our sons (29 and 26) would like an album or two of the highlights. They lost a close childhood friend to cancer a few years ago. Seeing Hanzlah smiling makes me smile. Any of him which I don’t keep will go to his family. What are all of you doing with piles of printed photos? Better ideas?
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Going through the photos can be an onerous chore. But worthwhile. My son has a scanner that can do slides and negatives. And he put a whole bunch of them online for all of us. Digital phone cameras mean I have over 10,000 pictures since 2007. Way too many. But I am grateful for the older ones. My 38 year old nephew died last week leaving behind three small children
And no will. My sons and I are in Lubbock Texas for his funeral and in the slideshow at the funeral home week all contributed so many pictures. It was good to see them. The only faintly good thing to come out of this experience was that my sons and all of their cousins with young children are now seriously planning to do their wills.
Oh, Sue…I am so sorry for your loss. We are all going to Cabo in November and I told my sons they need wills too. They have investments and vehicles. We have thousands of digital photos of later years, too. I could task the husband with digitizing some, as in the worst case scenario you mentioned, they come in very handy. With sincere condolences, Sally
Thank you, Sally. It’s a hard way to have a family reunion.
We are digitizing all of ours. Then selecting the ones that are special and having them printed out in album format as a bound book. We have some that are postcard format which are just post tintypes. They are five generations back. Some even have names that match the family tree. Will take a photo of that to put in the book of ancestors.
I’ve thought about that. I have six or seven Creative Memories albums left and all the tools to use them. I’ll run through those and see where I’m at. Good idea, about the book. I think Costco does those, too.
I have a storage facility, and my photos, slides, and negatives are in boxes. Way too many to go through. I’m afraid my kids will have to pitch them. I think I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to photos! Yikes!
Going through them has been a trip back in time. I’ve put them in piles – pitch, give away (some are going to relatives in Ireland). my two sons, and me. Brian has been glancing through the discards. Next I need to get them in some sense of time order, sort again and purge. Then I’ll be ready to throw the best into albums. It’s a long, but fruitful process. Maybe you could do a box or two a week? Once started, its really quite fun. Good luck and you are not a hoarder, a preserver of precious moments in time…
I’ll try to find the time, you are an inspiration!
I’ll try to find the time, you are an inspiration! Thank you!
I’d like to say that necessity didn’t play a part….the closet where many bins were stored needed to be cleaned out for a potential long-term guest to use! On to more bins and more Resident Alien shows!