Need some motivation/inspiration for getting family photos organized!

[rnorwo1]

Hi Everyone,
I was fully on the scrapbooking bandwagon approximately 15 years ago. I have who-knows-how-much money in supplies, papers, stickers, accessories, etc. I also have a silhouette machine (hardly used) and some older version of a cricut (never used). Sickening. I used to go with friends to retreats, so I do have a few vacations and other activities done. However, the majority of my photos are saved all over the cloud and various hard drives and are a disorganized, overwhelming mess. I look at the stacks of materials and feel nothing but guilt and distress, and I have even had a little fantasy that something disastrous would happen to the thousands of printed photos that I have in boxes so I can just have an excuse to tell my kids and future grandkids why there are no pictures! I want the clutter gone, but I do need to do something with the photos so my kids will have some memories!

Has anyone else been successful with a serious backlog of organizing photos? I'm hoping there are some easy ideas here. Should I just print them and unceremoniously stick them in an old-school scrapbook? Or just sell a kidney and pay for dozens of digital ones?

Thanks for any advice!

 

[OrangeBirdGirl]

I am like you with all the supplies unused, and I used to do the retreats as well.

So a few different pieces of advice. First is, I totally purged my supplies. I kept my Silhouette and Cricut as I occasionally do non-scrapbooking projects with them, so I kept my paper. I gave away all embellishments. I kept various cutting systems as that comes in helpful for other things.

I switched to Shutterfly albums about 10 years ago and I find that so much more enjoyable. I like that I can sit at computer do a couple pages and stop. No mess to clean up, or have set out. So maybe transitioning to digitally doing would be a good option.

About 2 months ago I came across a box of traditional pages that were completed but not in a scrapbook. There was also a stack of pictures that I didn’t have pages done. I did traditional scrapbooking to finish up that album with the photos and I hated it. It is so putzy and messy. So I do not regret getting rid of a bunch of my stuff and doing Shutterfly albums.

I would start organizing digitally going forward.

So all these photos you have sitting around, it’s too hard to find where they are digitally? Or maybe you don’t have digitally?

I would go through your hard copy photos and figure out what you want to scrapbook. Then take a photo with your camera of the pic and now you have it digital and upload to an online album place. Or get a scanner, I’m thinking it’d be pretty inexpensive. Or if you need a new printer you could get a combo printer/scanner. I’d try the digital album and see if that’s enjoyable to you. you have nothing to lose.

Another reason I like Shutterfly albums is the space savings. I have 71 total scrapbooks between traditional and Shutterfly. I have 42 Shutterfly albums in the same amount of space as 15 traditional albums. And my Shutterfly ones are huge, some at their max of 110 pages.

 

[hopemax]

I am starting a similar thing. I have all the scrapbooking stuff, and used to participate in swaps over on the Creative Community Board. My Mom passed away after a 1 year battle with cancer in 2015, and it took me a long time to even feel like doing anything with photos, because she was the one person in my life who expressed an interest in my crafting, and I felt so disconnected to my own life. Plus, in the 18 months, I was off the radar, it seemed like all the scrappers disappeared. It's just my Dad, my DH and me, so no one to create for. Plus, not only do I have all of my stuff, when DH's grandfather's passed I took all the photos, negatives, some old papers (stuff from WWII) and stuff from DH's grandmother on his other side when she passed. Those are harder because, since it's not my family I can't identify people.

I had gone through DH's stuff once, when I first got it, to clear out the random stuff that was mixed in that needed to be tossed. Then I had plans of working on it during pandemic, that went completely unfulfilled. I decided I had to get my guest room, back in shape, which meant tackling this project. I don't expect to finish it, but to get it another step closer to a final product. I ordered a bunch of page protectors of different sizes and a couple binders, and then for about 15-30 minutes on days when I have time, I get a little bit done. I have 80% of the paperwork organized. The negatives are all together by themselves, the photos, ditto. And I'm really close to everything fitting in one box, and some permanent archival organizers I had bought at the beginning. So when I take another break, everything will be neat and contained. And hopefully, it will make it easier when I start the process of sorting photos (next step), trying to scan and label everything (later step). I expect, these other steps will be a long term process, but by breaking them into manageable chunks, progress can eventually be made.

I think the key is having a clear idea of where you want to end up. Then, take it a step farther and decide on a minimum goal, and several stretch goals. For me, the most important thing is having everything stored digitally in my Flickr account and on an external hard drive (in case tragedy strikes). I would eventually like it to also be organized neatly in folders. But first step, is just getting everything in one or two places. So for you, I might suggest you identify which one of your many cloud storage options you want to be the primary. Make a list of everywhere else in the cloud you have photos, and then work on getting things moved to one place (or two if you want an external backup), even if that means you have duplicates. Cleaning that up can come later. If you have an idea on how you want them organized (I do them by year -> Dated Events, with some catch-alls for Daily Life, Cats, etc.) Then if you have some easily categorized events, sort them out. I've been really bad, about smaller vacations, events, but managed to keep up somewhat with our International trips, and Disney trips.

For physical photos. There is nothing wrong with the old style photo sleeves, or stored in photo boxes with cards clearly identifying event/dates. Especially, as a first step. For DH's family stuff, I bought an accordion style file folder, with several different pockets so I can sort by person or event. So again, figure out ideally, what you would like to present to your kids, and what is the minimum you would be happy with. For example, I would love to have all the old photos and negatives, labeled, organized, scanned digitally, and make into photo books, but the minimum for me is safe storage, dated, labeled and organized by subject as much as I know. The goal is to have an organizational structure that makes sense, so that I can grab one of the remaining ziploc of photos, spend 15 minutes sorting them down into smaller groups (for DH's Grandpa's photos the sorting is like, WWII, city house, beach house, births, holidays / birthdays / 1st communions), and then later take the smaller batches and work on labeling and dating and getting help from other family members.

In cleaning the guest room, I flipped through my old scrapbooks, and I still love them. I wish I had more of them, but I still get held up with, " Is the time to make the books worth it, if I enjoy the process and result, even if I have no one to pass them onto?" I'm hoping that in handling the photos, organizing and revisiting memories, I will find that answer. I expect some stuff I will eventually scrap, since I have the supplies. And others, I will just end up with old style photo sleeves, but properly labeled.

 

[rnorwo1]

I am like you with all the supplies unused, and I used to do the retreats as well.

So a few different pieces of advice. First is, I totally purged my supplies. I kept my Silhouette and Cricut as I occasionally do non-scrapbooking projects with them, so I kept my paper. I gave away all embellishments. I kept various cutting systems as that comes in helpful for other things.

I switched to Shutterfly albums about 10 years ago and I find that so much more enjoyable. I like that I can sit at computer do a couple pages and stop. No mess to clean up, or have set out. So maybe transitioning to digitally doing would be a good option.

About 2 months ago I came across a box of traditional pages that were completed but not in a scrapbook. There was also a stack of pictures that I didn’t have pages done. I did traditional scrapbooking to finish up that album with the photos and I hated it. It is so putzy and messy. So I do not regret getting rid of a bunch of my stuff and doing Shutterfly albums.

I would start organizing digitally going forward.

So all these photos you have sitting around, it’s too hard to find where they are digitally? Or maybe you don’t have digitally?

I would go through your hard copy photos and figure out what you want to scrapbook. Then take a photo with your camera of the pic and now you have it digital and upload to an online album place. Or get a scanner, I’m thinking it’d be pretty inexpensive. Or if you need a new printer you could get a combo printer/scanner. I’d try the digital album and see if that’s enjoyable to you. you have nothing to lose.

Another reason I like Shutterfly albums is the space savings. I have 71 total scrapbooks between traditional and Shutterfly. I have 42 Shutterfly albums in the same amount of space as 15 traditional albums. And my Shutterfly ones are huge, some at their max of 110 pages.

Yikes, 71?! I also don't want to overdo the albums. I have 3 kids, and I want them to each have a few they can take with them when they move out. I used to be really bad about taking 1,000 photos for each vacation (now I am lucky if I take 10!). I'll have to get good at just saying no to all these amazing memories!

I would imagine all the photos are digital. We have several old hard drives that we kept because pics are on there, so I'm assuming I never did get around to uploading many of them. I guess I may need to first spend some time organizing the prints to see what we have, and then I can go through the digital and see if there's overlap.

I cannot wait to get rid of all this clutter! It's relegated to my office/craft room, which I cannot use because my anxiety goes up just walking in. I have it all organized and neatly stacked in cabinets and under shelves, but it's still so much.

 

[rnorwo1]

I am starting a similar thing. I have all the scrapbooking stuff, and used to participate in swaps over on the Creative Community Board. My Mom passed away after a 1 year battle with cancer in 2015, and it took me a long time to even feel like doing anything with photos, because she was the one person in my life who expressed an interest in my crafting, and I felt so disconnected to my own life. Plus, in the 18 months, I was off the radar, it seemed like all the scrappers disappeared. It's just my Dad, my DH and me, so no one to create for. Plus, not only do I have all of my stuff, when DH's grandfather's passed I took all the photos, negatives, some old papers (stuff from WWII) and stuff from DH's grandmother on his other side when she passed. Those are harder because, since it's not my family I can't identify people.

I had gone through DH's stuff once, when I first got it, to clear out the random stuff that was mixed in that needed to be tossed. Then I had plans of working on it during pandemic, that went completely unfulfilled. I decided I had to get my guest room, back in shape, which meant tackling this project. I don't expect to finish it, but to get it another step closer to a final product. I ordered a bunch of page protectors of different sizes and a couple binders, and then for about 15-30 minutes on days when I have time, I get a little bit done. I have 80% of the paperwork organized. The negatives are all together by themselves, the photos, ditto. And I'm really close to everything fitting in one box, and some permanent archival organizers I had bought at the beginning. So when I take another break, everything will be neat and contained. And hopefully, it will make it easier when I start the process of sorting photos (next step), trying to scan and label everything (later step). I expect, these other steps will be a long term process, but by breaking them into manageable chunks, progress can eventually be made.

I think the key is having a clear idea of where you want to end up. Then, take it a step farther and decide on a minimum goal, and several stretch goals. For me, the most important thing is having everything stored digitally in my Flickr account and on an external hard drive (in case tragedy strikes). I would eventually like it to also be organized neatly in folders. But first step, is just getting everything in one or two places. So for you, I might suggest you identify which one of your many cloud storage options you want to be the primary. Make a list of everywhere else in the cloud you have photos, and then work on getting things moved to one place (or two if you want an external backup), even if that means you have duplicates. Cleaning that up can come later. If you have an idea on how you want them organized (I do them by year -> Dated Events, with some catch-alls for Daily Life, Cats, etc.) Then if you have some easily categorized events, sort them out. I've been really bad, about smaller vacations, events, but managed to keep up somewhat with our International trips, and Disney trips.

For physical photos. There is nothing wrong with the old style photo sleeves, or stored in photo boxes with cards clearly identifying event/dates. Especially, as a first step. For DH's family stuff, I bought an accordion style file folder, with several different pockets so I can sort by person or event. So again, figure out ideally, what you would like to present to your kids, and what is the minimum you would be happy with. For example, I would love to have all the old photos and negatives, labeled, organized, scanned digitally, and make into photo books, but the minimum for me is safe storage, dated, labeled and organized by subject as much as I know. The goal is to have an organizational structure that makes sense, so that I can grab one of the remaining ziploc of photos, spend 15 minutes sorting them down into smaller groups (for DH's Grandpa's photos the sorting is like, WWII, city house, beach house, births, holidays / birthdays / 1st communions), and then later take the smaller batches and work on labeling and dating and getting help from other family members.

In cleaning the guest room, I flipped through my old scrapbooks, and I still love them. I wish I had more of them, but I still get held up with, " Is the time to make the books worth it, if I enjoy the process and result, even if I have no one to pass them onto?" I'm hoping that in handling the photos, organizing and revisiting memories, I will find that answer. I expect some stuff I will eventually scrap, since I have the supplies. And others, I will just end up with old style photo sleeves, but properly labeled.

I'm really impressed with all you've done! It's funny that you're mentioning all the goals and steps (objectives), because I had just seen another thread with making SMART goals for 2023, and this was the first thing that popped into my mind. As I've done year after year, I pushed it away immediately because it's just so overwhelming. But, you're right, I need to just set that timer for 15 minutes and work on perhaps getting the prints into boxes, and then I can go from there.
Oh, and I also have my grandmother's old photos and books; I felt compelled to take them, no one else wanted them. I don't know most of the people in there, but it just seemed terrible to throw them away!

 

[hopemax]

Oh, and I also have my grandmother's old photos and books; I felt compelled to take them, no one else wanted them. I don't know most of the people in there, but it just seemed terrible to throw them away!

DH's aunt was going to let the estate company they hired to empty the house sell them, "because some collectors apparently like that stuff." I was like, "This is not right!" When a different aunt found out I took them, she was so relieved. She had taken some stuff, but couldn't take everything. And in going through stuff, I found postcards Grandpa sent to his parents when he was on a ship during WWII, photos from their ports of call. He was a cook, so there are menus of what they ate. I know if I handed the family members a photo book with everything labeled, and photos next to the appropriate postcards, they would love it and be so happy that someone took the time to pull it together into such a convenient and easy to store book. But they are mostly minimalists, and couldn't see beyond the mounds of mixed up documents, photos, and random papers. So I keep plugging away. There is a cousin who is into genealogy, so I'm hoping by the time I get to the labeling of people I don't know (I do know some), she can be of assistance.

 

[OrangeBirdGirl]

with, " Is the time to make the books worth it, if I enjoy the process and result, even if I have no one to pass them onto?" I'm hoping that in handling the photos, organizing and revisiting memories, I will find that answer.

We do not have children and I know eventually they’ll end up in the garbage. But DH & I look at the books quite a bit. Ours are all vacations or year in review albums. Just last week we pulled out 2 different albums as wanted to see something on a trip.

I enjoy it and it’s a nice hobby, hopefully you’ll find enjoyment too.

 

[OrangeBirdGirl]

I have 3 kids, and I want them to each have a few they can take with them when they move out.

We have traveled with our parents before and I do books for them. When I traditional scrapbooked, I would just duplicate each page as I made it, one for each album with photos swapped out to reflect more of each persons album. Now with digital, I do our album then duplicate a 2nd album and swap out some pics to reflect our parents in more individual photos. Maybe you could do one of those options to create multiple albums easily for each kid? Christmas layout all same family pics then a couple child specific?

 

[rnorwo1]

We have traveled with our parents before and I do books for them. When I traditional scrapbooked, I would just duplicate each page as I made it, one for each album with photos swapped out to reflect more of each persons album. Now with digital, I do our album then duplicate a 2nd album and swap out some pics to reflect our parents in more individual photos. Maybe you could do one of those options to create multiple albums easily for each kid? Christmas layout all same family pics then a couple child specific?

GREAT idea!!

 

[hsmamato2]

Oy. I feel your pain... I was in this position a few years ago.... Used to be a big scrapbooker etc also. Decided it was silly - I used to have a jumble of different albums on my shelves- a few years back I felt the need to streamline all of it. I chose a simple notebook at Walmart, black,all one size and shape, and I started going thru pages...deleting the (over)abundance of photos that the scrapbooking craze had me taking/saving. (I don't need 20 pics of a good memory,just one is fine thanks) I redid each and every page on a simple white "magnetic" album pages (bought on amazon). This was a project I'd work on while watching tv at night,and it took me a long while. I tossed about 50% at least of photos along the way, consolidating all the chaos into simple streamlined pages,and those black notebook/albums.
Once I finished that project,I now had about 30 or so albums set neatly on my "album shelf", with a marked date on the spine. I also use only one online storage place (Walgreens) to easily view and access any old photos(I upload in batches after an event) and I also use the auto backup of google photos. Now I just try to work on my album memories as they come up,and it's pretty simple.
I feel that physical photos/albums are highly important to me... I love having them in my house to have the memories...I've currently got 30+ years of albums.... I tried a few digital book style things too from shutterfly, those are not my favorite to look at,or make(they take forever to put together) so I quit doing those.

 

[LynnTH]

I was always buying stuff for scrapbooking, then never did anything. Was going to start when my kids were born. (They are now 24 and 21). Finally I started a few years back, while they were both away at college. Most of my pics were printed and some digital. I went through everything from when the were born up to HS Graduation.

I made them each a book (its a huge book) covering birth until graduation. I sorted the book in different categories.
Birth, Baptism, Toddler Years, School Years, Prom, Graduation, Sports (they both did multiple sports since 4 years old), Holidays, Pets, Vacations etc.

I did about 2-6 pages for each theme. And organized each theme by date. Oldest to newest.

I surprised them with these books a few years back at Christmas. I worked my tail off getting these done and when they came home from college, I hid everything.

It was so worth it. I am glad I took the time to do them. The kids loved them!

Now I am done and have gotten rid of most of my scrapbook stuff.. I may go in and add some college things but most of the pics for that are on the kids' phones, so would need to get some pics from them.

 

[Best Aunt]

I sent all of the family photos out to be scanned. I used two different companies:
www.scandigital.com
www.scancafe.com

I think the first time I found coupon codes on www.retailmenot.com

After you do one order, you start getting emails with coupon codes.

I did not send them out all at once.

If the prints are sorted, you can organize them by putting them in zip-loc bags. You can write a label on the zip-loc bag, such as "2022" or "WDW Aug 2021." The company will then create a folder with that name, and put those photos in that folder.

I realize this isn't for everyone. But I find that I was never looking at the photos, whether they were in albums or in boxes. But I do look at them now that they are on my computer (because I'm sitting on my butt looking at the computer all the time anyway).

Now to click on "post reply" and see if the web addresses are x'd out or are allowed.