Andrea,
I started with a two small boxes and some index cards with tabs and then started sorting them by occasions like: Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc...Then did a section for each of my kids, pets, uncles, aunts, cousins, houses, kids friends, my friends, weddings, church, birthday, vacations, school, etc... and then divided each section of pictures by year, to the best of my memory. It took some time, but works pretty well so far. Penny

Hi Andrea,
I agree with Penny. It really can be an overwhelming task if you have years and years worth of photos to sort through. I'm not sure how you are doing your albums (all Christmas in one album, birthdays in another, or just cronologically??) Mine, for my two children, are done chronologically..so when I started to sort the pictures, I actually did it on the living room floor. I had scraps of paper that I wrote the month and year on. Then just did one photo at a time, and put it under the appropriate month and date. You will be surprised at how well you can remember when photos were taken when you have other dates there to compare them to! Then, I put them in a box, one for each child, and divided them with index cards. Hope this has helped a bit! I know its frustrating, but I find that doing it when the house is quiet, and having a nice bottle of wine close by really helps!! LOL
Good luck!!
~Mar~

Hi, Andrea! Thanks for replying to my similar question in the Organizing forum. I was surprised to be told to go here, as I am really looking for organizing tips and storage tips. I will try to remember to stop by here and see if you get more replies. Someone posted a new message to an old question on the Organizing forum about photos, and I read through it all, but found not too many ideaas. It seems many people have a problem with organizing photos. BTW I did a search of this site and found nothing either.

I have to tell you all about a nifty little photo case I ordered from QVC. Once a month Lisa Bearnson from Creating Keepsakes magazine gets on and does her thing. A few months back they had a photo case to store all your pictures. It is a large two sided case that comes with tabbed cards that you can use to seperate and label each grouping of pictures and plastic dividers that you can put anywhere you want them to be in the box (the box has slots to hold the plastic dividers ). The flip side is more shallow and will hold other things like templates and rulers. The case 13'X14" and mine probably has more than 500 pictures and still room for more (that's a rough guess!) I highly recommend buying this case. I think it cost around $20.00 plus S&H but it is well worth the cost. I even remember one lady calling in to the show and telling the two hosts that she had purchased the photo case from QVC a few months prior and her house was for some reason flooded and all the pictures survived and none were at all destroyed. It's not necessarily perfectly water tight, but it was one lady's neat story. I'm glad I made the decision to buy a case for my photos, it really makes organizing them much easier. I am not sure if they have any cases listed on their website but you can go to www.iqvc.com and type in creating keepsakes in the search box and it will give you what they currently have in stock. If they don't have the photo case at that time just keep watching for the Creating Keepsakes hour and maybe they will be selling it again. I know I have seen them demo this case at least twice within the last six months. Happy organizing!

For the last 9 years I've been really, really good about labeling each batch of pictures according to month/year. I also spent about a year a couple of years ago going through about 20 yrs. of pics sorting them (and their negatives) into month/year. I keep a regular photo album with pictures sorted in chronological order as well as their negatives (in archival negative sleeves). Then when I'm ready to scrap, it's all organized. This really came in handy this spring while preparing a photoboard for DD's HS graduation. It took a lot of time to organize it but was well worth the time. I can't emphasize enough, though, to take care of each developed roll of film as soon as you get home with it....before it has a chance to get misplaced. :-)

Another great help: We recently had to replace our camera and I insisted on one with a built-in date stamp.

I just recently just finished develoing years worth of photos. When I got them back I tried to recall the date and year or even time frame. Then I put them in a plastic storage container according to date. The ones I was unsure of I put in the back to see if I could recall the dates. Now, I have put little blank stickers on my film containers and when I am through with the roll I write the date and a brief description of what is on it. When I take in to get developed, I will write on the bottom of the package the date and event.