When my Mother passed away and I inherited boxes of old photos, clippings, announcements photo albums of many sizes etc. etc. etc.....I spent most of one year re-organizing and putting stuff in albums of uniform size and archival quality....the timing was right for it to happen. Even postcards were put their own (plastic pocketed) album. I organized by year, cropped and pretty much made 'collage' pages....many photo's telling a 'story in photos' with few captions on only a few pages. I typed into a computer program all of the details I could gather about ancestors from obits etc.and sealed those clippings into album pages as well. It DID take a year, and my large dining room table was like an ocean as I got it cleaned up from one year/era before the next came rushing in. I still have one photo box with 'worthwhile' but unidentified photo's and duplicates, if any family members ever want to check them out; and one box of negatives identified mostly as they were saved by the photographer. Meanwhile, the very large 12x12 albums ARE looked at frequently and different 'times/people' are found easily. A couple of summers ago, youngest grandaughter made the observation that there were no photos of her in the albums (age 13), so this winter I did spend some time bringing the "Family Albums" more up to date. Digital is fine, but we do miss gathering around he 'albums' checking out the parents etc. and it is a still to be done chore to get some digitals printed. We are about to visit 38 year old grandson who has just had his first baby, and meet his new wife and 2 children. I will be taking ONE album.... the time period when he lived with us during his baby/toddler years. I expect it will be fun to show him off to his new family.... and then the rest of US when they come here to visit. I also made seperate albums for each of my 3 children... taking many photos 40 miles into town to scan. Today I have my own scanner and printer, so that should make putting albums together really easy. Still a work in progress, as each of the families continue to grow.

I'm awful - 90% of the time I just don't even take pictures (just don't think about it). LOL People get over it though...after they finish being annoyed that no, I can't show them pictures of that trip because I didn't take any, and no, there aren't any pictures from me of my hubby dressed up as a french maid this halloween. ;-) My mom does the one on top the other in the frame thing. My sis and I bought her a few really nice frames, and she just puts the most recent pictures on top, with the others still in the frame below. Saves photo album space and shelf space. I am the "keeper" of the family photo albums (ironically enough), so I have the photo albums (all 2 of them, the thin magnetic albums) that have my parent's wedding pictures and early family pictures from the 70's & before in them. They mostly sit languishing on a shelf, though I did get into one for a baby pic my sis needed of herself for work recently. Other than that, no one looks at them. When I went to Paris, I took all my pictures digitally, and bought postcards everywhere I went. So my scrapbook from that trip is very simple - my postcards, and my favorite digital pics printed out and pasted in the scrapbook, along with brochures, etc. No fancy stuff, just the stuff I got in paris. The rest of the pictures were deleted, and I don't miss them at all. 5 of my favorite postcards are in a very nice frame that I have hanging on the wall (one frame for all 5). It does me no good to post pics online for family - most of my relatives really aren't "online" as per se - they'd rather have a "real" copy sent in the christmas card or whatever. I did send a wedding pic with our announcements - our other wedding pictures were done by the parents, and my MIL got a small photo album and put prints of the digitals in there, I just added the "real" prints my dad took, and that's that - no fuss, no muss, and it's small (5x7 album), so it takes up very little room. :-) For grandkids, my grandma has 22 (I think?). A couple years ago, all of the aunts & uncles got together and bought a huge frame, and had a mat cut that would fit pictures of all of them, plus all the grandkids. One frame, all those pictures. Now when Grandma gets new pictures, she just has to put the new one in that frame, and everything is in one place...no tons of pictures on the wall anymore. :-) I have very few family photos actually framed and sitting out - a wedding pic from my sis (because thier expressions are hilarious, and it makes me laugh), a professional picture of my parents, and one from my grandparent's 50th anniversary. Anything else I get just gets tossed in a magnetic photo album - no fuss or anything else. That's where my wedding cards are headed too, very soon. :-) I would suggest you just keep some magnetic photo albums on hand, and when you get those cute little photos, stick them right in the album, and don't worry about anything else. Or get one of those huge frames and a mat cut with room for each grandchild, so you can have them all in one place. That will be easiest for you, and much easier on your walls! ;-)

Casey, I know how you feel (although I am not as organized as you and my photos are not all in albums). I've really only started scraping and love it. Once you get started, you may feel that you would rather have everything in a scrapbook. You don't have to crop everything (although I seem to be a big cropper...probably cause I take lousy photos) and can use the entire photo in your scrapebook. Do you have duplicates of (or the negatives for) your photos? I have an old habit of getting dups of all my photos so I wouldn't have to worry about "give aways." If you don't have dups, just the negatives, once you decide which photos you want to scrape you can have duplicates made and use those in your scrapbook. This way you can have the best of both worlds and not worry about it! I still cringe everythime I crop, but I generally have dups and if not, I have one made. It costs to have them made but I feel better knowing I have a copy of the "whole photo" somewhere..even if it's not in an album. Sorry this is so long...hope it helps. Karen

If you received albums for a wedding gift and want to use them, just buy non-magnetic pages at Wal-Mart...you needn't do anything special to pics removed from a magnetic album...