What's below is more or less a copy and paste from a post I did on the Home Decorating forum a year or two ago. I sorted the temporary piles and kept them in brown paper grocery store bags while I was working. No need to buy anything. As for categories, go with the broadest categories that make sense to you. I had one pile for each of my siblings. Each one included all the pictures with just that sibling, all pictures relating specifically to that sibling--so all birthday parties, all sports events, awards ceremonies, etc., even if there were other people in the picture. Then I took other events, like Christmas, and sort of divided the pictures amongst all of us. I somehow became the Keeper of the Photos in my family. I have pictures of my grandparents and a few of my great-grandparents, plus a ton of photos that my parents sent to my grandparents of all us kids at various stages--Dad was in the military, so they took a lot of pictures to send to the families back home. This is how I tackled the project when I decided to get them organized. It might give you a few ideas. Step 1. Sort. Discard all the blurry photos, the ones that didn't come out, the ones that no one will want. Sort everything into general categories. I did Great-Grandparents, Grandparents, Mom & Dad (which included baby/child pictures of them up to their wedding pictures and also pictures of them without the kids). For myself and the 7 siblings, a pile of family photos, plus individual piles of pictures of each sibling. That took some doing, as there were usually 2 or more kids in each shot. So Bobby got all the pictures of his birthday parties, even though there were other siblings in the pictures, for example. Step 2. Identify. There were a lot of older pictures, like those of Mom in her teens, where I couldn't identify everyone. (My parents had died long before I started this project.) So I called the aunts and uncles on Dad's side of the family, and visited them with a ton of pictures in tow. Had some very lovely visits, ate a lot of cookies, drank gallons of tea, heard some interesting stories about Mom and Dad and Grandpa, got names for almost all the faces. For Mom's family, I had a little tea party when some older cousins came into town and we sat around the table and looked at pictures and gossiped madly. Step 3. Decide. There were so many pictures that scanning them all would have taken forever. So I picked certain pictures to scan. All those of the grandparents and great-grandparents--this was only about 15 pictures total. Mom and Dad's wedding album. All the first day of school pictures of all the kids. One picture from each birthday. Random funny or significant pictures. Then one of my brothers scanned them--I think there were about 500. They all got put on flash drives and every sibling got one. (So we have backups out the wazzoo if we need them.) Step 4. Preserve. I really didn't want to get rid of any of the pictures. So each sibling got their own stack of pictures--the ones that were clearly theirs, like the birthday pictures, plus a selection of group shots. Since there were usually a couple of shots of the same group, and I had duplicates of many of them (because my parents always had two copies made, one for each set of grandparents), there were enough to go around. A couple of pictures, like the only one we have of my paternal great-grandmother, I took to a photo store and had duplicates made for all my siblings. Then I took the pictures I liked best and make a few photo albums. Not scrap books. I bought archival quality photo albums that allowed room to write the names and dates and occasions. There's one for Mom and one for Dad and one for me and one for all the grandparents. And one with baby pictures of Mom, Dad, me and the siblings, and now all the nephews and nieces. All the rest of the pictures are stored by category in archival boxes that shouldn't damage them. I got a lot of the supplies from the Exposures catalog.

This has been my project for the past few weeks. I had six moving boxes of photos. I grabbed a box and headed to a friends ceramic shop. By using her shop, I had to sort in a couple of hours and then pack up and not leave it scattered all over the house. I took large manila envelopes with me and have sorted by each child, a basic family group of stuff, photos of me and dh in a previous life (I still am not ready to pitch the wedding photos of the ex). I've now done this with each box and reduced it to two boxes with the envelopes. Last week I took the envelopes with just one of the kids and really started purging those photos. This was dh's first child and he has significantly more shots than the other kids. Looking at these, I'm realizing we are lousy photographers and I don't want 20 pictures take of the same basic shot. One or two will do and then I'm putting some of the doubles in the family envelope. I don't know that I'll ever get them in any type of albums, but I'm finally not feeling like I'm climbing Mt. McKinley when I think of these pictures. I'm just about ready to make the switch to digital, now that we can easily make prints and don't have to buy the special ink jet paper and stuff. It would certainly help eliminate all of those lousy and duplicate shots that I ended up with. Gloria

Joann: Thank you for the design and all of the example pics. You and your DH are really very talented. Did either or you ever do this work professionally or is it a hobby? Thank you for highlighting all of the architectural details. That is exactly what I need to see. DH and I were debating about this glass as the side panels are quite narrow so your pics are very helpful to visualize the whole effect. I should mention here that this is not a fully custom shop. We basically get to pick different door/cabinet styles, wood species/stain/hardware, height/width, drawers and component configuration so I may not be able to order some of the lovely design details you incorporated, though I will bring in the pics and inquire about it on Sat. I did notice the bottom doors on the console are not full overly which it looks like you designed for the sides. I'm going to guess my top option will not be full overlay so we'll see. Also, my hinges are not the euro style on bottom and stick out the sides. Wouldn't they need to match? As the TV is 50" wide, I was thinking of having the center opening be 51". Then in the vertical direction with the TV height at 31" I was thinking we should add a bit of beathing room--say about 3" extra on top so the TV box would then be 51"W x 34"H. I think I'll check the TV specs to see any ventillation requirements, though I know DH wants some holes in the back for cables, etc. I notice hoosiergirl's TV is very tightly set into the built-in. I'll let you know what they come up with when we go in over the weekend.

A lot of difficulties arise not just because of size, but also doorways, windows, traffic patterns and such. For instance my future renovated kitchen will be 15.5 ft x 12.5 ft, which is bigger than any other kitchen I've had, but because of the structure and traffic, it won't be the medium- big kitchen that the same space could house with less constraints. I agree that if you are in between sizes, so to speak, you still have the smaller size kitchen with just more feet of travel. Although the NKBA guidelines are to be taken with a grain of salt, IMO; plenty of people are perfectly happy with 36" aisles or 12" of overhang. I've never had a full 60" of clearance behind seating except on 1 side (when the DR opened onto the kitchen) and never missed it, we did fine with 48". A set-up I dream of is a simple U shape kitchen with a 4' x 6' island, so about 18 ft wide (2' of counter on either side, 4' aisles, 6' island). I would want it to open onto a DR or LR or den, with side doorways opening onto the far side of my island, so that from wall to far island side would be 10 ft (counter + aisle + 4 ft island). Of course it would have to be wider than 10 ft if there were a wall or half-wall on the far side. Seriously though, this is so individual that how can one decide on measurement standards? Not to mention the huge cultural influence.... I grew up in France and Switzerland where kitchens are teeny tiny, and it didn't bother most people at all. Here we talk about 36" aisles as too small... Also the type of cooking, I know some cooks who would plan for 4' - 5' of flat cooktop like in a restaurant. Personally I love seeing tons of non-standard, idiosyncratic kitchens - blows the NKBA "must-haves" to bits while remaining married to function. One just has to choose which functions are the most important.