Organizing photographs...sort of.

17 years ago

I've been an avid photographer my whole life, following in my dad's footsteps. When my kids were small I filled a number of albums, but now they're deteriorating. The bulk of my photos are in under-bed storage. A lot of good they're doing there!

Some time back I bought some photo boxes and just dropped the pictures in as I acquired them. But that hasn't been very satisfactory either. For one thing, I wasn't writing on all the photo backs to identify them. For another, flipping through a box jammed with photos isn't as much fun as turning the pages of an album, and all that handling is not good for the pix.

Sooo....I recently bought a bunch of albums at Target. Each holds 300 photos, and costs about $15-17. The quality seems good (acid-free, etc.), the pictures slide in easily, and there's a nice space to write something beside each one. I've been keeping one on an end table, along with a showbox full of pictures, and just putting them in as I pick them up. I heard someone say once, "Who would want a whole mixture of years in one photo album?" Well, me. I can't imagine attempting to put all my photos in some kind of order, be it chronological or other category. Plus I think it's rather fun to open up an album and be surprised as you go along, rather than glaze over from viewing 300 photos of the same three toddlers.

When I need a break from whatever I'm working on, I sit down and add to an album. It's relaxing (and productive).

Susan

Comments (5)

wooderlander
17 years ago
Susan, thank you for freeing me from the idea that I had to put our thousands of photos into date and subject order before organizing them into albums that people could actually look at. For years, that's what has stopped me from doing anything at all. Now I feel that I might actually get started on them.

Sometimes I just need for someone else to say it's okay to do what I wanted to do in the first place.
minnie_tx
17 years ago
Sounds good to me Susan. At least you're getting them out of the boxes and enjoying them!!
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mickeysmate
17 years ago
Oh my! I wish I had found this forum a few months ago. I organized 15+ years of photos into storage boxes. LOL. Took a lot of time but it was fun to go through and see how my kids have changed.
quiltglo
17 years ago
This has been my project for the past few weeks. I had six moving boxes of photos. I grabbed a box and headed to a friends ceramic shop. By using her shop, I had to sort in a couple of hours and then pack up and not leave it scattered all over the house.

I took large manila envelopes with me and have sorted by each child, a basic family group of stuff, photos of me and dh in a previous life (I still am not ready to pitch the wedding photos of the ex). I've now done this with each box and reduced it to two boxes with the envelopes.

Last week I took the envelopes with just one of the kids and really started purging those photos. This was dh's first child and he has significantly more shots than the other kids. Looking at these, I'm realizing we are lousy photographers and I don't want 20 pictures take of the same basic shot. One or two will do and then I'm putting some of the doubles in the family envelope.

I don't know that I'll ever get them in any type of albums, but I'm finally not feeling like I'm climbing Mt. McKinley when I think of these pictures. I'm just about ready to make the switch to digital, now that we can easily make prints and don't have to buy the special ink jet paper and stuff. It would certainly help eliminate all of those lousy and duplicate shots that I ended up with.

Gloria
Julie_MI_Z5
17 years ago
Susan,

I have been a scrapbooker for many years, and chose an album system that allows me to change the order of the pages. Since I started this after my kids were already in elementary school, I also put pages in the album in random order and put the older layouts in with the newer ones in whatever order I get them done.

I agree--definitely breaks up the monotony!