Help! My books are taking over the house!

[Phlip]

I am a seasoned scrapper-don't really do much any more for a variety of reasons-but what do you all do with your finished books? I have many, many finished scrapbooks, photo albums and boxes of pictures. Not to mention the photos languishing on my hard drive and back up hard drive. The digi ones are ok just hanging out-but what do you do with all the old photo albums? Way back when I started scrapping, I moved the pics to archival books, but now I have at least 30+ books. I have them on shelves, in drawers, in an old cedar chest. My boxed photos are organized and under one of the beds. I am seriously thinking about off site storage!
Help!

 

[LindaBabe]

Yup. That's an issue all right. I have 4 linear feet of shelf space in the library, full. 4 feet under the sofa table, full. 8" books - 2 feet under the coffee table, and a basket full of tiny ones, and a little red wagon full of minis. and about 1.5 feet of books in progress in the diningroom. That's just scrapbooks. Then there's 8 feet of photo albums and I dunno how many photo boxes . . . Maybe I'll start passing off some to my heirs . . . or dh can burn 'em in the outdoor fireplace.

 

[Lisa]

All my albums are on the old wooden hotel desk in our living room. DD likes looking at them periodically.

 

[funkychunkymonkey]

i do 8.5 by 11 albums for the fact they fit in a normal bookcase, this said, I need a new bookcase....

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Yup. That's an issue all right. I have 4 linear feet of shelf space in the library, full. 4 feet under the sofa table, full. 8" books - 2 feet under the coffee table, and a basket full of tiny ones, and a little red wagon full of minis. and about 1.5 feet of books in progress in the diningroom. That's just scrapbooks. Then there's 8 feet of photo albums and I dunno how many photo boxes . . . Maybe I'll start passing off some to my heirs . . . or dh can burn 'em in the outdoor fireplace.

And I'm inheriting most of them!! LOL
Hopefully not any time soon though! You need to stick around a lot longer.

But I do need to work on space. I have 1 shelf in my living room and it's beyond full. I'm hoping to incorporate book shelving in my space.

 

[katied]

I know I'm probably in the minority here, but DH and I are in the process of converting all our old print photos into digital photos. We then pick out a very small number of print photos to save, and then rest become garbage. The historic photos (from my greatgrandma, grandparents) are all saved, but the more recent photos from the 70's - 2005 are all getting digitally archived (1 set on a harddrive, 1 set on a jump drive kept in a fireproof safe, and another set archived online). Trying to save all the pictures my mom took, plus we've taken and printed, was just too crazy. We had more than 15 bankers size boxes just of photos!

Now, I plan my scrapbook pages ahead of time, so I only print the pictures I'm going to scrapbook. The rest just stay digitally archived.

The scrapbooks are all on the bookself - I have a 4 foot wide and 6 foot tall bookcase in my scrapbook room that holds my completed albums, plus various other suppy items.

 

[MazdaUK]

I've just hidden the boys' completed albums (3 each) in their wardrobes, I have a shelf full of completed and in progress plus some in a cupboard (and a few under the cupboard). It is an issue, as the ones on the shelf lean over and knock my boxes of paper askew so DH thinks they look untidy

I don't want to store them where I can't look at them - help!

 

[Phlip]

I know I'm probably in the minority here, but DH and I are in the process of converting all our old print photos into digital photos. We then pick out a very small number of print photos to save, and then rest become garbage. The historic photos (from my greatgrandma, grandparents) are all saved, but the more recent photos from the 70's - 2005 are all getting digitally archived (1 set on a harddrive, 1 set on a jump drive kept in a fireproof safe, and another set archived online). Trying to save all the pictures my mom took, plus we've taken and printed, was just too crazy. We had more than 15 bankers size boxes just of photos!

Now, I plan my scrapbook pages ahead of time, so I only print the pictures I'm going to scrapbook. The rest just stay digitally archived.

The scrapbooks are all on the bookself - I have a 4 foot wide and 6 foot tall bookcase in my scrapbook room that holds my completed albums, plus various other suppy items.

How did you transfer them? Did you have to scan them yourself, or did you have them done? I think that's what I'm going to have to do, it is ridiculous how many photos I have...

 

[katied]

We did some ourselves, the ones that we really could not live with losing, we scanned (but then we still sent them off, because we found the quality of scanning with the service was better than at home).

Otherwise, everything went to a service (scancafe.com). If you sign up on their website, you can get emails with special offers, etc. You can sign up when you like the deal online, and then send the pictures later. A couple friends used them first, and were happy. I tried them and also liked the service and quality.

 

[New England Eeyore]

I'm really leaning toward just biting the bullet and sending all my old photos and negatives to Scancafe. My scanner is pretty decent, but I just don't have the time to sit and scan them all in (plus it's an incredibly boring task!) It would be a pretty good chunk of money, but at least it would be done and I could stop have it hanging over my head.

As far as scrapbook storage - I'm fast approaching the point where it will be a real issue for me. Right now I have a big bookshelf - about 8 feet tall by 4 feet wide, that is full. I can free up two shelves by getting rid of the old photo albums and putting the photos in photo boxes, but once those shelves are full I'm a little stuck. My problem is I don't like to limit myself on what I scrap. 2009 is a ridiculous example - we went to WDW which will end up being at least 2 albums, probably 3. I did Project 365, but I also did a chronological album, so that's 2 more. Then we did a bunch of trips to NYC, and that ended up getting its own album. Then we did 3 long weekend trips in the fall, another album. That's 7 albums for 1 year! Granted that's an exceptional year, but still it's a little out of control. But if I enjoyed the process of making all those pages, I'm not going to worry about it, even if the books end up in a trunk in the basement someday.

 

[JohnsonsLoveDisney]

Funny, I was just wondering the same thing the other night. I have a bookshelf in the living room and the whole bottom shelf is full and the middle one is 1/3 the way there. and the top shelf has all the 7x7's on it. and thats just up till 2007! I still have a ways to go. couple of Disney trips, dance seasons, general stuff. gonna be out of room soon. Guess its off to IKEA for some solutions. I like to leave them out because my girls like to look through them.

 

[PirateTink]

I keep the most recent albums plus the kids' books in the family room coffee table cabinet & under the side table. The rest are on the bottom shelf in my scraproom. I need to move some other things there to make room for more.
I've been considering & toying around with digital scrapping & keeping the albums on CD (could get them printed into books, if I really really wanted to I guess). But I do like playing with all of the "stuff" I've collected, so I'm not quite ready yet.