I have mine in photo albums and will keep them that way.

The only reason you need to get them out of albums is if those albums are the 'magnetic' type.

I just redid mine a few months ago. I had some in magnetic and bought all acid free albums. They are skinner and take up so much less space. I got rid of people that I haven't seen or been in contact with in years and years. Got rid of friends kids that I haven't seen, etc. I found some after the fact that were laying around and I didn't want to go back and put them in order because I would have to move way to many. Those I just stuck in a photo box.

I've got to do something here so smaller is better with the space the albums take up. I wish I was more compentent with the computer to scan each picture in and then know they'd always be safe. Of course if I scanned them all in I'd start today and not finish until next year and thus get no other projects done!!!

If you scan them you can always put them on a CD or even on photobucket, shutterfly or similar.

Yes, but a CD is tough to pass around at Christmas....

or any other time you want to share with others.

I agree. I put mine in new albums but still want to put them on photobucket or such just in case. I love going through my albums every once in a while.

Cheap albums with the plastic overlay on sticky paper will harm your photos. You can order archival quality albums which will protect your pictures. I finally got rid of all my cheap albums because they took up too much space but I wasn't ready to scan everything onto a disc. There are 2 companies that I ordered archival, acid free storage boxes from - Light Impressions and Archival Methods. They offer a number of safe ways to preserve pictures.

There are companies that will scan the pictures for you. I haven't used them, but they are out there. I linked to the first one that came up on Google.

Here is a link that might be useful: Photo scanning company

I went through about 75% of the pictures my parents had stored in boxes, etc. Scanned all of the good ones, pitched the fuzzy/blurry pics. I then took all of the memorable pictures and compiled them into a file and put them on a memory card. I purchased a digital photo frame and put the memory card with it for their gift and it was a great hit.
Now all the pics are safely stored in photo boxes for their peace of mind, stored on my computer and in a photobucket account. They usually turn the frame on when company comes over so guests can see them.
My grandparents liked it so much I went through all of their pictures and did the same thing.

There are companies here that do that but they charge by the scan and it is at cheapest a nickel a scan- it doesn't come out cheap when you have about a thousand pictures. I admit it was time consuming but very rewarding. It was a chance to throw out bad pictures, preserve the good ones, and put the memories on display.

i think it is nice to be able to go through and cull out old photographs often, and do you find that if you have them in boxes no one ever looks at them anyway?

I think for me the best thing to do is to keep the ones i really love in photo albums, if i cant part with the others they can go in an acid free box.

another idea is to scan them into one of those electronic frames that you can have them change displays when you want..or your computer..i have lots in my ocmputer now..

i find that very seldom does anyone but me or my closest family really give a rip about my photos stored in albums or boxes anyway.

one thing..we got about 25 to 30 pounds of photos out of my MIL's house after she died, and my SIL has them still in boxes, tripping over them, cause she can't bring her self to throw them away..you gotta come to the place where you keep only a few important ones and toss all the useless ones..then have ACCESS to the ones that are really great..garden photos should go in a garden journal by the way

I have the same problem and have "kind of" targeted this year to get them organized. I'm not ready to scan or digitalize, but am ready to prioritize and downsize. I agonized over the many photos I also inherited upon the death of my mother--SHE had boxes from her aunts and cousins who died before--I had gone through a few with her in the last years of her life and so was able to identify some of her friends and relatives, but there are still gobs of old-time photos of folks I don't know and there is now no one alive who knows or cares--my mother did not even know all of them.

Still there is some kind of emotional pull that someone someday may want to see that photo taken in World War II or whatever. What's helping me is that I can't imagine my kids would experience it so differently, and I expect they too would just feel the burden passed on--that vague what do I do with these? thing that nags you because "photos" are special and harder to throw away.

So far my plan is to save and label, and frame, our closest relatives, make 2 or 3 albums of "my" relatives, particularly with my brother and I as children with them--as these would be the ones that mean the most to me and might be amusing to my kids. That way, they would not inherit boxes!

I still have years of our own nuclear family photos in boxes and again, I hope to mainly "albumize" just a few shots of each event and thin out the rest to keep some photo box storage; occasionally someone wants a photo for a project.