Digitize. Those things are breaking down as I type this.
Look for a great deal through Amazon local deals or Groupon and send those slides, photos, etc off to get made it to bits and bites. Then, back them up twice and keep one back up somewhere else.
Try hard to do a weeding, so you are not spending money on blurry slides or something you don't care about.
Try for looking at 50 at a time and organize them by decade and year if you can. The deals I usually get are 350 at a time, but I think you can buy two coupons.
That being said, there are all sorts of services that do it, I just like getting a deal.
Good luck.

Been working on this myself for about 100 years. Most of my photos and so forth involve either my siblings or my children. They want their chance, too! So we came up with an arrangement:

I started a box for each of us, and photos and papers all go to one of these places - my box, or for one of my daughters or siblings. My brother gets genealogy stuff, I limit myself to the best for each event, they can sort what they want out of the rest (they know this and have agreed).

In exchange for me giving them so much, I have agreed to scan all I keep and be sure they each get a copy. Since I am keeping most of the legal documents and also have typed out the stories, it has seemed a fair division of labor for all. Yeah, they get 3 or 4 times the photos, but they also get copies of the "meat" that I have kept.

There's just too much to get through. Literally thousands of pictures, slides, hundreds of papers. It seems to be working well, all have cooperated with the project.

A few years back I sorted the photos by the people in them and sent them to the people. I gave my sons theirs and divided the ones with their Dad and Me in them. I even had photos of friends which I sent to them. I am sure in doing that I sent a lot of smiles and memories to them. I still have my travel photos, they don't mean anything to anyone except me.

I don't keep letters for more than a month or so, if I did I would have boxes everywhere.

This post was edited by EmmaR on Thu, Nov 6, 14 at 17:35

I agree and do plan to digitize but the volume is so huge that I know I need to weed through before I do that. I appreciate whatever advice you share. I think the idea of going though 50 at a time is going to help me.
Please continue to Share away whatever wisdom comes to you about this.

Little bits at a time - it sounds like the whole project seems completely overwhelming (which I understand).

The trick, I think, is to find a regular time when you can work on a small batch, and make it a routine. Watch TV for an hour? Grab a stack of photos to sort.

My brother got a scanner that could do slides, and he scanned all my Mom's slides - decades worth. But before that, Mom got rid of a LOT - many that her Dad had taken. She eliminated photos from all her parents' trips (which was a lot), except for places that she herself had been, and photos that had her parents in them. That cut out a significant chunk.

Good luck!

You might take a semi-substantial chunk and go through it a few times.
Not that efficient ("efficient" = "handle everything once"), but you might find it fast if you're tossing out all the photos of the animals at the zoo, or anything without people.

Bcs this:
Mom got rid of a LOT - many that her Dad had taken. She eliminated photos from all her parents' trips
is great advice for this project.

(and something to keep in mind while taking photos in the first place.

You might also do some thinking ahead of time, w/ that sort of advice in mind.

You don't need every pic of your kids or even of you; just the ones that seem important somehow. So maybe write down (so the exercise of writing forces you to think) what would make a picture be something you felt a need to save.

Also--make envelopes for each of your kids, and sort into them. Remember to save for them photos of their parents and their siblings.
(I made an envelope for both of my kids and put school pics for them AND their children in there.)

This post was edited by talley_sue_nyc on Thu, Jan 22, 15 at 17:17

Indeed a task. Just get in the same mind-set as you do with clothes ....... time to go. Enjoy a smile during the sorting process, and a sigh of relief when their gone. yes, dump kids, family, vacations, whatever onto them, and now it's there choice. Add a note....returns not accepted. For the Family History, think I have sorted out most that are revalent to keep seperate, and have digitized them. Good winter project, should sort more. Either way, when my time comes, I'll bet a bunch that ALL of it will be in a dumpster.

I have a big box of my grandmother's photos. Some are of her parents and other people I have never met. So I am sharing with my father's cousins and my second cousins. We are bonding over the "puzzle" of figuring out who these people are. (I scan the photos and send via email.) I tossed the scenic travel pix. Kept a few that were funny. We have archival quality clear sheets to use when storing the originals. You can buy special pens to write on the photos, too. If anyone in the family is into genealogy, they will appreciate the family photos.

I have not gotten very far on this project, but it has been rewarding.

I just sat down with one slide tray as I finally found the slide viewer (been meaning to do this for months at least maybe a year?). It was of a vacation my parents took. the tray holds 40 slides, and I now have 16 keepers. I think I will likely whittle it down further.
I think I am going to try to do a tray or 2 at a time ( I haven't bothered to count how many trays I have, as I think I must have 15 or 20.).
I am going through with the plan that scenery ones and not flattering ones of the loved ones are history.
Then I think I will make another pass at the potential keepers.
Ultimately I will digitalize them.
(already a problem of people in some photos that I have NO clue who they are).. but progress is progress. Trying to keep the motivation thing going!!

Photos are one of the most difficult things to thin out as they are little bits of memories. I usually do some sort of scaling as to how important or how much I treasure that moment in the photo. If it is less than 5/10 then I toss it. I think the best way to deal with it though is to digitize while only keeping the most important ones in a photo journal or something similar.

Like gardenspice, I got a great Amazon Local deal for slide scanning (Photobin) and sent off about 750 of my father's slides. The company returned my slides in perfect condition, along with a DVD of all the images at high resolution. Also, they post the scans on a password-protected website and you can share the albums with faraway family members. They are able to download any images they like. Now, instead of having a box full of unseen slides in my closet, my cousins enjoy looking at the photos online and remembering a lot of good times.

Plus, it's a relief to have backups of all those slides in case something happens to them.

Now I'm eyeing a box of Super 8 films to sort and get digitized.

My dad was an avid photographer (I am too), and left me thousands of negatives, prints, and slides from the 1920s to the 1960s. I bought a Canon 9950F scanner, which does a beautiful job on all three. It is no longer manufactured, but this one comes close and costs a lot less:

Canon Canoscan 9000F

Luckily for me, my dad was far more organized than I. All the negatives, all the slides, and most of the prints were neatly filed. Still, the sheer volume was daunting, as was the fact that I knew nothing about using a photo scanner. As a result, the scanner sat in its unopened box for a couple of years.

But once I pushed myself to "just do it," it turned out to be an enjoyable and often exciting task. I've been doing it for about five years, a few at a time. My dad would be amazed to see the technology--and, thanks to the Internet, how many people enjoy seeing his photos.

His photos are a legacy, and a valuable one. I'm so lucky to have them, and to be able to hand them on to the next generations. I hope they will feel the same way about my own photography.

This seems to me to be the sort of daunting task that just feels completely overwhelming at the beginning- you stand there looking at mounds and mounds of stuff and it threatens to scare you off even attempting it.

I would try my level best not to think about that and just pick up a box or two to do every day. Let the completion of each box fill you with feelings of accomplishment and pride at how well you are doing.

Then at some random moment you will look up and see that you actually have whittled away at it to the point of getting somewhere, and that the end might really be in sight.

Nutshell version- don't look at the forest, concentrate on one individual tree :)

I am facing this now, and think the tip about tossing the scenery only pix is a good one. I have lots of pix of my parents' vacations, and even quite a few of those which do have them in the historic places, I mean even though I am sentimental I am not sure how many pix I need of my mom in front of Tower of London or sitting at a café... I am torn between the approach of trying to only save the really nice photos, and worrying about regretting tossing.
Truth be told, I have tossed quite a few already- gone. I am planning to go through the keepers again, and try to organize them a bit better and then depending on how many I have remaining I will consider buying the scanner suggested above or sending to one of those places that does it for you... need to stay motivated.

Here's one other idea for how to organize this.

Make the "place" ("...a place for everything, and everything...") or the "bucket," that you're going to put them in first.
Here's how:
Decide what categories you will want to keep. Pictures for your kids; for your extended family; OF your family.

Make those boxes / folders / albums.

Also decide ahead of time (as discussed above) what to toss.

Then you can look for what you've already decided to keep; it might make sorting faster.

And you will have the place to put them all ready; it'll make it a one-time sort (for the keepers, anyway).

Also, I would probably try to set up a permanent work space, so that it would be easy to spend 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there, without having to get anything out. A card table in a corner of the living room, maybe.

My husband is an only child and his parents were big on 35 mm slides. We have very few photos of dh from his childhood BUT we have so many trays of slides. I'm looking for a half way efficient method/tool for viewing them to sort out what we would like to digitize. Any suggestions?

clairebuoyant1 -- do you have a light table of any kind? I don't know what they cost, I bought mine years ago, but you could lay out dozens of slides on this and get an idea which ones are landscape, which are people, maybe even see who they are. However, if they are in trays they may be in order and you wouldn't want to change that. Maybe the best thing would be to buy a slide projector and look at them all. These days photo printing is quite expensive but I used to have all my slides digitized and put on CD. I think I'd buy the viewer -- not the little hand held one. Gee, I'm realising I don't have much advice for you --

clairebuoyant1, you could see about renting a slide projector, or asking around to borrow one (Facebook, Freecycle, your church or school--anywhere you can think of). Tons of people have them hanging around still; sometimes they pop up at thrift shops.

Thanks for the suggestions I think I'll check amazon or ebay for a projector.

check ebay, and look for "slide viewer"--you can get some that let you view a single slide, for under $25. Including this one!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bell-Howell-Projector-TDC-Deluxe-Model-D-in-case-/251918500651?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0amp;hash=item3aa783432b

Or this!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pana-Vue1-Lighted-2X2-Lighted-Slide-Viewer-/181716382106?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0amp;hash=item2a4f23f19a

And at amazon, if you look for "slide viewer" instead of "projector," you can find hand-held ones that don't need lightbulbs.
http://www.amazon.com/Pana-vue-Slide-Viewer-Viewing-Transparencies/dp/B0002GRLL8/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1429413853&sr=8-3&keywords=slide+viewer

But I still say--put up on freecycle that you want to borrow one, or be given one--there may be people glad to get rid of theirs, esp. now that so few people use them.

Yes ! I have a slide viewer like the one you linked (originally from my parents from the slide era). I couldn't believe when I plugged it in that it worked. (sometimes I have to hit it :).

I am slowly slowly going through tons of slides. I have honestly tossed many of scenery, or of trips my parents took where I don't know who the people are, or where the pic is just not a good one. I have my reading glasses next to the viewer to help me view them even better. It's definitely a time consuming exercise. I had started out with a bang, going through so many trays of slides, and then took a break only to find many more trays. Eventually it will get done. But yes to the slide viewer thing. I am relieved to know they can still be found in case mine goes kaput.