What To Do About Boxes Of Old Photos
A reader asks: “My mother has boxes of photos dating back to 1973. I don’t want to lose this valuable record of family history, but I just don’t know how to begin organizing them so that they can be enjoyed.”
The best intentions to scrapbook or put photos into albums can be interrupted by life’s demands, leading over time to boxes of unsorted and unviewable photographs which do no good to anyone. But, like this reader, we rarely want to dump these boxes of memories and history into the trash.
Unfortunately, there’s no magic shortcut to this problem: my suggestion is to carefully go through the photographs, grouping them into years to the best of your ability—friends and family members may be able to help if you’re not sure when a particular photo was taken. If you can’t group them into precise years, you should at least be able to sort them into some sort of logical order (for your family pictures, this might be toddler years, elementary school, high school and so on, while for older pictures, decades might be more practical and readily judged by clothing styles even if you don’t know who the people are).
Unless you’re a competitive scrapbooker, elaborate albums are not an efficient way to cope with a backlog of photos. Choose a simpler solution now and get your photographs into some kind of order, and you can always go back and scrapbook them into something special later.
If you’d like to have your photos in albums for easy viewing, choose simple acid-free pocket-style albums so you can easily slip your photos in as you sort them. This requires a small investment in purchasing the albums, and a slight extra effort in slipping the photos into the album pockets—and some people may find it difficult to sort quickly into albums without fretting over the particular order of the pictures and rearranging them. However, the resulting row of neat albums may be worthwhile for you.
Otherwise, the best way to store photos outside of an album is in a series of clearly-labelled shoeboxes. Most photos are printed at 4″x6″, which is a perfect fit for a shoebox, and this prevents the sliding and disorganization that happens in a larger box or bag. A shoebox system is a starting point in your ultimate goal of organized photographs—sorted by years or time periods, labelled, and stored in a dry place, your photos will be safe, and you’ll be able to find them when you want them. Eventually, you or someone else may find the time and energy to do more.
Here’s a tip: While you are sorting and grouping, pick out and set aside a few photographs you’d like to keep around—when you think, as my friend Cheryl puts it, “This photo is frame-worthy!”—and make an effort to frame and display them in the next few months.
Another suggestion to consider is having a DVD made from a selection of photographs, either of a particular year or event, or of highlight moments in your family’s life. This can be a truly priceless gift for Christmas or on any occasion. There are a variety of companies that provide this service; I recommend www.goldenlegecy.com.
