While preparing for a recent move, the last thing I had time for was sorting through hundreds of family photos.
I decided to simply box them up, whether in frames, albums or envelopes from where they’d been developed. There were even plastic bags full of old photos we’d taken from a secretary desk in my grandmother’s house when we sold it years ago.
I figured I’d have time to go through them all at my leisure once I was settled into my new abode. I had already displayed a number of favorites on shelves conveniently built into my main hallway, and had hung or displayed a few cherished ones here and there around the apartment.
But the boxes containing the bulk of them were occupying considerable closet space, increasing the incentive to get started as soon as possible.
A box at a time, I spread everything out on the living room rug, generally discarding the frames to save space, unless they were photos of my ancestors in antique frames, in which case I generally let them be and added them to my photo shelves.
As anyone who has gone through family photos knows, this is a time-consuming and emotion-filled process. Each one triggers memories – of the person (or animal), the occasion it was taken, the mood, etc. Mostly happy times, hence the photo, but occasionally someone is frowning – what brought that on? Ah, remember that trip to Oaxaca? And there are Mom and Dad in Alaska. Look at Chris as a baby, and Mom as a little girl!
Stacks of memories
Reluctantly, off they go, into their piles. There are separate stacks for each person, except for old friends, which get lumped into one pile, and distant family members, which share another. There are piles for trips (greatly edited – too much scenery and not enough people qualifies them for the recycling pile); piles for places we’ve lived. Often there are duplicates (those photo shops often had “second set free” specials, which was great when we wanted to share, but now it’s time to part with the extras we hung onto). As long as there are good ones of a particular person, it’s OK to discard the really unflattering ones – who would want to be remembered that way?
I also made piles for my brothers to look through – baby/childhood photos; photos of them with our parents and grandparents – the ones they chose not to take went into the piles I was saving.
I framed several more favorites for the shelves and put the rest into smaller boxes, organized as much as possible by category. Those boxes are now easily accessible under the bottom shelf of the photo unit.
Don’t have a built-in photo shelf? (I never did before, either!) A similar concept would be a dedicated bookcase, a room-divider screen (some are made specifically to hold photos) or large multiple-picture frames (there are some attractive handmade wooden ones available on Etsy). Or simply frame your favorites and hang them in a hallway or stairwell.
While I have scanned some photos over the years, mostly as a safety measure in case of fire or natural disaster, many people choose to scan them all. You can have someone else do it through companies like Legacybox or DigMyPics, or you can laboriously do it yourself. The thing is, how often will you look at those scanned photos? (Probably as often as you look at the ones stored on your phone or sent to the Cloud.) As a backup, scanning is a great idea, but I want to see all of my loved ones as I walk down my hall, or look up from my computer, or wherever else I’ve placed them.
The dusting may be a bit daunting, but it will be worth it.
