You're more patient than me... I tossed all the negatives and called it "done". LOL

So here's my status.

I have organized 16 years of photos that were tossed into a box the size that would hold a television! They are now organized into photo boxes, and sit nicely on a shelf.

I have one small, shoebox sized box left! That's all!

It was just a slow steady tortoise process of getting it out on the card table, and working on it whenever I had a few minutes. It feels so liberating!

re: the negatives, there ended up being fewer than it seemed. They are in one photobox, all labeled!!!

I also labelled the spines of a couple of the albums so it's easy to tell what is in which book (I put most photos in boxes, with separator tabs, but certain photos deserved to be in an album).

Talk about spring cleaning! And what fun walking down memory lane while I did it!

hooray! How neat that it turned out to be less work, and less stuff!

Did you toss a lot of pictures? I'm figuring if I ever tackle this, I'll throw a lot out.

If i ever tackle it, I'm going to e-mail you for pep talks!

Tossed all the various holders and envelopes from the photo development labs. That was about 3 bags of trash by itself! Tossed a few pics, but kept most; not sure why. Now that sorting/stowing is over, I might take it further and get rid of doubles or give to people who were also in the photos.

Wow Karen, good for you. I'm so happy that you got it done for YOU! And had fun doing it. I finished all mine 3 years ago and haven't touched them since. Been throwing everything in a filing cabinet. I'm dreading starting all over again. I can't believe I let it go this long. DS has a light table, I should put all the negatives on that and look at them and decide what to keep.

You are inspirational. This is exactly what I am working on. (see "need encouragement and advice")

You have described exactly what I envision when I am done: separately filed and labeled negatives, labeled albums for deserving photos, and filed extras.

Tonight I will work for one hour.

Thanks!
JC

I'm not sure how to handle negatives, bcs I'm not sure I want to keep the photos in the blocks they were when they were taken,.

I've sort of envisioned "birthday parties" and "vacations" and "animal pictures from zoo trips"--but I suppose I could find those things flipping through a box or album done by year as well, couldn't I?

I have never, in 41 years, had to go back to find a negative for something (except for a reprint right after I got them developed).

I want to label the accordian packets of negatives and then place them in my firesafe for 2 reasons: 1)I am always worried, in this 84 year old house, about an electrical fire and 2)I try to have my things ready in case we need to evacuate for some horrible reason. Unlikely, but not totally far-fetched being within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant, near I-90, and 5 miles from a major Great Lakes port.

People and pictures and personal documents. That's all I'd grab. And food.

Actually, I might start a new thread on this one.

I've decided to pitch the negatives. I haven't used them and we always get three sets of prints made, so I usually have an extra anyway.

With the reprint machines available, I'll just make extras if I need them.

I have three very large boxes of photos. Maybe this will be my project for this summer. Just getting them in some type of chronological order. I can't ever remember how old my kids were in pictures, but I always remember the clothing size. How strange is that?

Gloria

Gloria, a good number of the prints I found had dates on the back, put there by the photo processing company. I still had to figure out probably a third, but I was surprised by how many had the date on them.

Also - in recent years, the photo processing folks give you a CD instead of negatives, and the CD had the date printed on it!

Hope this helps.

I got everything organized in albums a few years ago, and have been keeping up with putting everything in since then pretty well. For negatives, I got a 3 ring binder and some negative pages. Each page fits one roll of film, and then I label the page. These are mostly for pictures that are important and that I would really miss if the picture was gone. When the kids were young, we used to get doubles, which ended up in boxes. I now have those in photo boxes. At the time, we gave some doubles to relatives. But I have found that it is really useful to have doubles - for the 8th grade slide show - they had a picture of many of the kids when they were young followed by a "now" shot. That was really neat! Then, they are always looking for old pictures for the yearbook, for school projects, DD just finished a biography project. I just tell them they can use the pictures in the boxes, they can cut them up if they want, whatever. As long as they don't touch the ones in the albums. (younger DD took a bunch when she was younger, and I still have not found them. The negatives were helpful there - I found out which pics. were missing and made new copies. But I have yet to locate all the negatives, and there were some pics. other people had taken). Now that we have a digital camera, I'm not sure what we'll do with pictures. But since the DDs are taking up so much space on the computer with music & their own pictures, I think I will get a hard drive to store them all on.

OH MY - I am in LOVE w/ the PTouch - even though I tossed ALL my negatives years ago. THAT decision was based upon my having custody of all family photos - back before my birth 66 years ago - even the black/white photos are often "unknown" - so I could not see how I would ever need the negatives. Digital changes everything.

Now - to the PTouch - it is the key to making the organization fun - labels on drawers, baskets, and such. Wonderful tool - because it catalyzes some activity!!!