Stop. I don't like being reminded of tedious projects that need to be done.

But following, in case anyone has any magical suggestions.

Feathers, When I am done, we can talk about email and socks. FWIW, I have made peace that these two will never be tamed.

Here is where I am so far. I keep one copy of any photo of the kids as long as it is a good quality image. They go in boxes for each; I figure they are narcissistic enough to want any and all pics of themselves.

There are also some photos that are so good or document important events and those are easy to decide to keep.

Then, almost everything else.

So many photos that neither of us have looked at in 20 plus years. And if not now, not us, who would ever want to look at them and when?

PS I tried googling this and all i get are the most godawful saccharine videos about scrapbooking. Sorry, no.

I made some arbitrary rules for myself and sorted my pictures, discarding any that didn’t fit the rules. The first rule was that, in this day of easy replication and reprints, I didn’t need to keep multiple copies. The second rule was if I didn’t know the people in the picture or didn’t care about them (distant cousins or one-trip acquaintances that I’ll never see again), into the trash the picture went. Number three was if I didn’t recognize the location and there were no people in the shot…trash. Anyway, you get the gist. I set up acid-free boxes to hold the sorted keepers and that’s where they exist today (in the top of a closet).

Fun, I think you’re on to something……..all I have to do is wait until my memory gets bad enough and sorting becomes a breeze 😎

”Grandma, is that my Dad in the picture with you at the Acropolis? The what? Never heard of it and I’ve never seen that person before— and I don’t know that woman, either. Toss it!

FYI

“You can find thousands of pictures of the Eiffel Tower, but only this one of you in it,” Roby says. “That has more historical importance.” A good rule of thumb for determining which photos to keep is to consider whether an image holds both personal and historical value. Put on your best Marie Kondo voice and ask yourself whether the photograph sparks joy. Then consider whether the faces in the photograph are in focus and large enough to recognize. A place of interest in the background (such as a family home or cityscape) or an important event (like a wedding) can add merit.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/store-print-photographs/

Also:

https://refinedroomsllc.com/print-photo-decluttering/

We are in the middle of this project. Have been taking a break for some months due to my schedule. I have to be involved because my husband is sentimental. Anything without a person in it gets pitched (except for husbands photos of first trip to Scotland - eye roll). Anything with a person whose name is uncertain is pitched (except if that person may be an ancestor - husband again - eye strain from rolling eyes). Any duplicates or similar photos...pitched. We got rid of a lot, but there is more to go. My husband's family is camera happy (and he is one of 11 children) and loved to share multiples of any photo they took of my kids. I'm grateful every day for digital cameras that ended that nightmare. When my SIL died we got her copies of the multiples we had of our kids already...Nooooo! But someone took time to sort through all of them so we have to look at them again. And wait a suitable time after her death to pitch them (what is suitable?????). My husband is a lovely man but sooo opposite in terms of sentiment.

All those copies were to be given to family years ago...now that family is no longer interested in your kid from 10 years ago make a box for them. One box for each kid. Do they want them? Not really, not now anyway but when you are gone their sentimental side will be triggered and will be glad you saved them. If there is no one--then the thought of complete strangers digging through old photos in the back of a thrift store ought to be motivation enough to burn baby burn them. The last five years of actual photos being printed in my world are in boxes by year. When my in laws died each of four sons took a HUGE box of pictures/slides home to comb through/cull and digitize so all four sons would have access to memories of their lives as a family. My DH ended up with the historic box-- family portraits and stills going back to the beginning of photography. After tripping over that ugly box for 10 years I spent a summer scanning and trying to sequence. A few of the brothers have glanced at the shared file, but no one really seems to care THAT much, and I'm still tripping over the dang box!!! My theatrical #1DD took many of the oldest originals because she likes historic photos. She particularly likes them hung for her creepy Halloween parties. Having her own relatives made more sense than the thrift store portraits she's collected. If the thought of where they end up when you are gone isn't motivating enough then well I guess they will be there when you are gone.

I did this when we moved 5 years ago. Similar to jmck, I tossed any scenery pics without loved ones in view, and any duplicates. I got some old-school photo albums and organized everything chronologically. I numbered the albums and they are all lined up on a shelf. I think I ended up with 12 books. They are tucked away in a corner of an upstairs den on a shelf, and I don’t think anyone has looked at any of them except for my DIL.

Kids’ school pics: I kept ONE small photo from each year. They are on a tray on the coffee table in the upstairs den, because they are funny.

When each kid graduated from HS, I made a shutterfly book of pictures of their ”school years”. I doubt any of them have opened their book more than once or twice. In fact, I slaved over a big book of gymnastics photos for DD when she graduated from college (she was a gymnast from 1st gr thru college) and I recently saw it on her bedroom closet floor…she moved about 2 months after graduation and left it. Sigh. I am more sentimental than any of my kids are.

I did a similar project when we moved in 2015. At that time I dealt with not only some of our photos but a bunch of photos that belonged to dead relatives. Anything with people or places I didn't recognize got trashed. Any poor quality photos - trashed. I kept a few old photos of the relatives if they made me smile. I put some of the ones of my brother in an album to have on hand at a gathering when he died. The rest are unorganized in one plastic bin possibly to be looked at some time if we are in the mood and have nothing better to do. Or possibly they'll still be untouched in the bin when we croak. I did this without DH on hand which I'm sure made it much easier to purge a lot of them. I guess I'm fortunate that for quite a few years I put photos in albums and labeled each album with the months/years of the photos in it. I do look at those once in a while.

When my parents died, I took all of Mom's photo boxes and albums to my house to go through. I did not want the albums, so wen through those first and chunk the album. They traveled a lot, and she took a lot of photos over the years. I kept ones with them in them, if they were decent photos (most were). I also kept some scenery photos, but most of those got tossed on Round 2, when we moved this last time.

My own photo albums - removed all the photos from them. Kept the better ones. Tore the ones I was throwing aways into two or four pieces. I used Mom's photo boxes for everything I was keeping or giving to each child. I did the same as you for multiples - each kid in photo got one, and if a good photo, I might toss extra pic in another kid's box, even if they weren't in the photo. Let them deal with it.

On top of those, I also had photo albums my maternal grandparents had for each child. This comes under the multiple category, and most of those were handled the same as above. Allocate or tear into pieces.

Old family photos - Mom was the keep of her family photos and Dad got many from his parents as well. I started going through those (after taking photos out of three scrapbooks/baby book she had and one he had). Then i made piles of his, hers, theirs, maternal family and paternal family members and started scanning. Lord, that takes a long time and I've barely made a dent. They are saved in iCloud and two other photo sharing sources. I plan to add many of them to Ancestry in the future. I have kept very few of the ones I have scanned, but I will keep a box or two. Ten boxes and just as many albums is/was just too much.

The largest old family photos I kept are 11x14. Mostly 8x10. A few 5x7/4x6. Anything larger than that, I took a photo with my phone and said some words as I tore them up. I even got rid of my very large 5yo framed portrait. I always hated. Donated frames. Storage was not limited in our last two houses, but is here. DD2 has her box and baby album. I still have DS's because I think he would toss them. I will give them to his wife, or daughter when she is older.

When DH and I moved to FL, DD1 said she did not want anything she left in the (climate controlled) attic. When I went up there, she had left most of her photos (at the time, not from my albums), along with some other childhood things in a garbage bag. So if she ever asks for them, I will remind her that she said she no longer wanted, and they are gone... which the are.

fwiw, I looked into sending the photos off and having scan for me. You still have to bundle and number.

Photographs are a curse. over the past year Ive gone through several generations of old photos. I used a process similar to Fun’s. I tossed all negatives, all duplicates and all photos of people I dont know. I probably should have been more rigorous about tossing. I pruned four huge boxdown to one. That was just old family photos. I have yet to do a second round on my own photos.

I had to toss reels and reels of old family movies that my dad took. Fortunately Id had them all digitized, but it was still hard.However, we watched some of the old movies and it was fun.

I guess scanning is the way to go but don’t expect anyone to look at them very often. The only time i looked at the photos was when i was clearing them o.

Heres a picture of the movie film I tossed.

I think it sounds like you're doing well. Won't everyone's categories be different? I overheard DH laughing with DD yesterday on the phone about some of our childhood vacations. I kept some photos of those vacations, and images of other childhood things we still talk about ( i.e., a photo of a horse in Anne Shirley's Green Gable's barn on PEI; a MN State Fair memory.)

I kept a few photos that I thought best captured how much we loved raising her, in folders separated by time lumps. I kept a few photos that showed her with her grandparents and a very few of other larger family gatherings.

I kept photos that I could picture DD being warmed by if she chooses to look through them. It can be spectacularly painful, too, as I was reminded when DH brought home some photos from his office ( he's retiring) of long-ago horse rides and horse photos. So, do your best and leave the rest. It's a gift to leave an organized and labelled set, though, that's for sure.

Sounds like we have all struggled with this. Trying to not pawn it off on the kids for "someday."

OTOH, I came across a site that said "we are what we keep." Most other sites were totally channelling Marie Kondo.

Sueb, your school photo idea is great. I think my kids would kill me. Boohoo about DD. I am sure one day she will revel in it.

JMCK, I have a sentimental husband too. One thing (and only one HAHA) i find very sweet is he likes and wants to keep every single photo in existence of me. No matter if I am in 7th grade with braces, he is like "but I don't have any other photos of you from 7th grade," to which I say "use it in a sentence or out it goes." The photos are memento-adjacent and that will be worse. He likes to keep his papers from law school (and make us read and praise them). Of course I like to keep my old performance reviews, to remind me how fabulous I am.

The thing about digitizing is, I have photos on disks and no longer have any machine that reads disks. Ded, my parents preserved all our family movies on Betamax! (Nailed it.) So digitization is not necessarily the answer. I am sure I can find a way to look at the disk, but who knows about technology?

This will be my next chore: https://refinedroomsllc.com/digital-photo-organizing-challenge-introduction/

DH and I worked on it last night and again this am. Two trash barrels gone. And I am thinking of some these darn cute boxes!

Ohhh I like those boxes, way cuter than my photo albums! And easier to pluck out one photo or organize them in different ways. Where did you find them?

what a super story, kitchenwitch

https://www.semikolon.us/photo-box-marine-1.html

Thanks! Here’s one from Container Store, not in cute colors tho.

I've done several things which made sorting much easier. Fifteen years ago I bought two large Bigo of Sweden boxes, 15.5" x 11.5" & 7" deep. One's filled with kid's school, sports, prom, etc pictures.

The other has my personal mementos along with dh's & my family pictures while growing up.

I also have a sweet old box my dad's mom kept for him with all his graduation cards, along with some childhood pictures, which aren't many but they're so precious.

In a separate box I have the remainder of random family pictures in a shoe box. DS1 can go through those. :)

When I've taken good pictures the past couple of years I frame hard copies for Christmas gifts for the boys. Along with envelopes with special pictures, but they had to have their own home before I did that.

The boxes are a prettier green but doesn't show up. Hard boxes and also protects pictures.

I have no idea whose got the box dirty, they're sitting on the shelf under the sofa table. Wolf! Lobo! I'm looking at you! 🧐

Thanks! Here’s one from Container Store, not in cute colors tho.

I also think the ; has more function and would look really nice displayed. I may get one for each kid.

I have not read all the previous posts.

I've undertaken a couple of photo org/purge projects from which I learned a few things.

1. Old family slides. The kind on carousels that need a projector. I inherited all my family's slides, about 50 carousels. I had to borrow a projector to view them projected on my living room wall. The plan was to digitize those worth keeping and toss the rest. That actually came to pass. But, any slide that didn't have an identifiable person was not chosen (exceptions being our house, inside and out). I don't care how lovely the Eiffel Tower looked that day, or the Grand Canyon, without a person you know or can relate to, it's just a generic photo of the Eiffel Tower and Grand Canyon.

Include a person in your photos!

2. Back in the pre-digital camera 90s, my husband and I spent most of one Christmas vacation sorting and labeling each photo print from our time together from the early 70s. We tossed duplicates. On the backs of each photo we wrote the date (year), place, and names of each person, L to R. Unless you plan to take the photos with you to the great beyond, someone is gonna look at some of these photos and people and go, who the heck are these people?!! It's a little legacy you won't be alive to enjoy, but it might make a big difference to someone who's interested in their family's past.

I don't care how lovely the Eiffel Tower looked that day, or the Grand Canyon, without a person you know or can relate to, it's just a generic photo of the Eiffel Tower and Grand Canyon

Yes. and No. For posterity, definitely. For one's own immediate enjoyment and pride of "authorship," scenery photos are enjoyable for those in whom they evoke memories (and no one else).

Unless you plan to take the photos with you to the great beyond, someone is gonna look at some of these photos and people and go, who the heck are these people?!!

The internet tells you not to write on them, but I think you kind of have to! Or at least sort them in envelopes.

Okay, I didn't think I needed to explain exceptions to any rules. :)

I assumed we weren't talking about one's own immediate enjoyment. That's different from "I've got so many photos from years past and need to pare it down, what do I keep and what can I part with?"

The internet is not the boss of me. I wrote on the back (in a respectful manner) of photo prints--I keep the negatives which don't take up much room. 30 years later, no bleed through. The value of being able to identify years later people/places/dates > having maybe to get another print made from existing negatives because there's writing on the back. It might even make them more valuable on Antiques Road Show. j/k

LOL Bunny just trying to justify my gallery wall!

As we have no children to pass photos on to, it's a fairly easy job for us. I have a few photo albums of specific events, travels, etc. I also have an album of childhood pictures of my husband, and one of childhood family photos for me. Other photos are stored in photo boxes; but as I know they won't be going further than us; I cull those that aren't meaningful to us. Funny about this topic as my husband's aunt passed away recently. He, his brother and their cousins grew up living near each other for most of their childhood. Over the years my husband and I have maintained close relationships with his aunt/uncle, their two daughters and now grandchildren and one set of great grands (twins!). Earlier this week we were at their house and one of the daughters pulled out old photo albums. It was such fun going through them and oh, the memories!

I don't care how lovely the Eiffel Tower looked that day, or the Grand Canyon, without a person you know or can relate to, it's just a generic photo of the Eiffel Tower and Grand Canyon. I have to disagree with this. We enjoy our trips. Sometimes we take lots of pix, other times, not many at all. However, we enjoy going back through our travel pix and remembering spots we've been, things we've seen, etc. No person needed. It's not generic to me, it's a memory.

Husband is retired, so it is his job to scan the saved photos...I'm sure he is behind since his supervisor is lax. It's one of those things to work on during the cold/rainy winter days or the super hot summer ones. We have four (FOUR!) different video cameras that each use a different recording medium and he has also tackled some of that...which I refuse to do. We had to save the cameras as there is no other way to view the videos. As far as I'm concerned it can all go....unviewed.

I think Mtn's idea to use some of the scenic photos on a gallery wall is a good one. Then you can enjoy them every day and be reminded of some great trips. Plus, you get art out of it.

wow - I really do belong with this group - I was just trying to figure out how to organize photos two weekends ago. I actually bought some similar boxes 15+ years ago - but never used them (actually, all but one are still in the protective wrapping). Guess I should find those. . .

I think they are hiding in the back of the top shelf of the linen closet in hallway- need to grab a step ladder and look (I usually just stand on my tip toes and start pulling things down from up there and from a high 24” deep shelf in a coat closet in the hallway to my garage - except yesterday I did that in the coat closet - and knocked a canister off the shelf - and now have a black and blue bump on my forehead!)

I didn’t know about not writing on the back of photos - I have some of my mom’s photo collection - and she wrote names/year on the back of most of them. Some are really old - none have bled through to the front.

I’ve been stuck in bed for the past several days and I am BORED- this would be a good project!

A more fun project is figuring out my new powder room - some of you offered to help me be more “bold” back when I commented on mtnrdredux-gw’s amazing new room a couple weeks ago.

I’m going to post some ideas to get the ball rolling!

And yes, I have ADD - grades were so important to me (plus, it’s not ADHD) = no one noticed. I wasn’t diagnosed until after my youngest daughter was tested when she was in middle school. I apologize for jumping around topics - I’m sure it’s annoying.

I guess the decision to keep/cull is highly subjective. Probably if I had taken the photo of the Eiffel Tower and had fond memories associated with it, I would keep it, cherish it, perhaps include it in a wall gallery. But it wasn’t mine, had no smiling face of my mom or dad, so it was a no-scan.

I thought I was being good because I have all the printed photos in albums, but the albums take up so much space. They have to go. Not looking forward to it. Thanks for the links

When my mother died, my sister took all of her photos and put them on CDs. Nailed it - for the time? But, we have them, and can access. Several years ago, I went through family photos before the age of digital. I discarded doubles, etc. I made 23 albums- lol. My plan has been to send them off and make flash drives- whatever- for each of the kids. The only thing I hate letting go of is that I wrote 'cute' stories alongside the photos. That will be lost. Adding: my friend is a professional photographer. I asked her why this process is so expensive? She said it's 1x1, slow go. You want it done well. There is no way to 'hurry' the process. Good luck to all of you.

Adding: my mother died 12 years ago. It cost a lot to scan those photos then. The cost is no less now. It is still pricey. I know you can do this at home. I'm not so inclined?

Maybe a good Christmas present?

Welcome Dani! I'm a grandmother and discovered I have ADD (not ADHD unless full of coffee, lol) about 9 years ago. It explained my whole life. I did a purse topic today & my ADD is one of the main reasons I posted it.

Back to photos! If my mom hadn't of written on the back and sometimes the front of old b&w pictures, I never would have found out the big butterball of a baby was my dad. I wrote on the back of certain pics I gave to my son, sometimes it's necessary.

If you write on the back of an old photo, do it in pencil not pen. The ink will bleed through. Maybe it is only for the really old photos, though, like those from my childhood (1952+) and earlier.

Buy a pack of stick-on labels and use on backs of pix if you want to write on them

This post is giving me anxiety. I was supposed to clean out my basement this winter including the many boxes of photos. Didn't happen. We now have a dumpster in the driveway for our bathroom remodel and I want to at least get rid of some of the bigger stuff in the basement while it's free. Well, not exactly free, but already paid for instead of hiring a junk removal company.

About photos, my dad was an amateur photographer. He was actually a pro briefly in his youth (weddings and such). He took a gazillion pictures of my kids (pre-digital) and would give me envelopes and envelopes of pics. Some were really good. The rest, not so much. After he retired, he would spend a lot of time blowing some of them up to huge sizes - like 11x14 or bigger - and give me those too. Sigh. I love my children but I did not need many enormous photos of them. What did he think I was going to do with them? I never had the heart to tell him to stop. He enjoyed it so much. He clearly knew I didn't hang them in my home but he never stopped.

I did make one pass through boxes of photos years ago and gave all the pics of my daughter with her dad (my ex) to her. But there's still so much more to go through.

I am determined to not make my kids have to deal with all this stuff when we're gone, but it's really no fun.

These are all great ideas. But I hereby declare this a winter project for me.

Oy, photos. I"m the keeper of not only our immediate family's photos but my mother in law's and my dad's.

I did finally go through the ginormous cardboard box stuffed to the brim with my own family's (husband and kids and me during our life together so far) drugstore photo packets (remember those?). That has been sorted and culled with the envelopes, negatives and duplicate pictures discarded.

My mother in law was the classic organized hoarder who kept thousands of pictures. Hell the woman kept EVERYTHING-not sure why she hung on to rough drafts of her eighth grade English essays but here we are.

Have done as others mention-all the pictures of places they visited are gone, pictures of their friends nobody knows etc. She had some kind of flex about taking pictures of random places and items in her home. I suspect it was a comfort ritual for her because she grew up very poor as a Depression era child in a chaotic family. So random pictures of her pretty bedspread, tea set or china hutch seemed very important to her. That said, they aren't important to anybody else so they are gone.

My dad was married twice after my mom died so many of his pictures are long gone but I took the albums and boxes remaining and have done a preliminary sort.

Now I have a dedicated closet area in the guest bedroom full of a few remaining albums not yet culled and a bunch of cheap photo boxes from Michael's.

At some hazy indeterminate point I plan to sort, label and file everything in perfect order. Note, I do not have any motivation to actually do all this so most likely someday someone will be cussing at me as they toss them but oh well, that's life. Maybe I should leave a note saying 'get rid of it all'.

I have several times done frantic sorts before holidays to make personalized photo albums, not sure if my now adult kids particularly cared.

But my siblings loved one I did of all of us growing up, the year our dad died.

And as a holiday gift I made one for my terminally ill brother in law with photos from when he was born until what turned out to be his last Christmas. He, my SIL and my niece seemed to like it a lot but he said it was tough seeing "my whole life laid out". Still have mixed feelings about that one.

Most of my photos do not have people in them - when I traveled, I wanted to capture the places that I went to (and I almost always traveled alone), and I wanted to see the landscapes for what they were. Very occasionally I would have someone take a photo of me in these places, and I have a handful of photos of friends, but really not that many.

Some people have asked me why I have no people in my photos, and I just tell them that I visited places alone. This makes it a lot easier for me to sort through photos and pick the ones I like best.

The "selfie" craze leaves me baffled.