Clutter question - What to do with old photos?

[disneysteve]

When my mother sold her house, I inherited all of the family photo albums and scrapbooks. A couple of times that I've worked in the garage, I've started to wonder what I will eventually do with all of those. There are literally thousands of photographs dating back to the 1950s, maybe even the 1940s.

I have absolutely no use for them. There are many photos of people I know, including me and my immediate family, aunts and uncles, cousins, etc. There are also many pictures of extended family members who I may or may not be able to identify, and a lot of other people who I definitely can't identify.

There are also a lot of photos of places that don't even include people. For example, if we went to the zoo, there are pictures of animals we saw there. I think those photos would be the first I'd get rid of. Why do I need a picture of a giraffe taken 45 years ago?

What about the family photos, though? Part of me feels bad just throwing them away but the other part of me can't think of any possible reason to save them.

What have you done, if anything, with old photos like that? I know I could get them all digitized, but why would I spend the money to do that if I don't need the pictures in the first place?

[Jluke]

Is there anyone in the family who is really into the family history? Maybe they would want them.

Does your daughter have any interest?

Any cousins etc who would want them?

Any next generation nieces, nephews who would want them?

Anything that a historical society would find of interest?

That covers a few avenues for you to have explored before making the final decision.

Hope that helps

[kork13]

It depends on the level of your tolerance & dedication. My wife's family (mother especially) would lose it if that amount of family photos were just tossed. My family is.... meh... we're more ones to keep what we value, and rid ourselves of anything not highly valuable to us.

So a few options:
0) Immediately toss all of the obviously meaningless photos. I'd do that first, regardless of what else you do.
1) Toss everything & don't worry about it.
2) Go through it & pick out the photos of you, or of those you care about. Toss the rest.
3) Do #2, except offer the rest to the family members who might have interest in having them.
4) Sort through all of them, determine who is actually in all the photos, and send the photos to those people. This is obviously the most time-consuming.
5) Talk to your relatives, and find another relative with the interest/desire to deal with the photos. Send everything to them with a smile & a thank-you.

Personally, I'd try #5 first, then #3 if no luck. If no other relatives are interested in having any of them, I'd default to #2.

[HundredK]

We scanned everything and threw hard copies away.

[disneysteve]

I would definitely reach out to family before tossing stuff. My cousins might want photos of their parents or grandparents. I'm sure there are also photos of very extended family that I have no contact with. I wouldn't worry about those.

I'm not ready to tackle this project yet but I would definitely start by pulling out the non-people photos. If there are any that I think might be of interest to the venue (zoo, museum, etc.) I'll reach out to them.

[DaveInPgh]

I have this concern about both digital and prints.

[disneysteve]

I have this concern about both digital and prints.

At least digital isn't sucking up physical space. I have multiple crates of photo albums in the garage. Even if I burn all the digital pics to DVD, they still take up very little space.

[rennigade]

Digitize them. Wifes grandparents had old pictures that you had to view through a slide projector. We bought a device that you insert the small physical picture and it scans them to digital. If you're dealing with the standard photo prints those are even easier to scan.

[HundredK]

You could also use your digital camera to take a photo of the photo (assuming you don't have a scanner) - then there's no money spent. Heck, even phone cameras have gotten good enough nowadays to be able to do that.

[disneysteve]

Digitize them.

You could also use your digital camera to take a photo of the photo (assuming you don't have a scanner) - then there's no money spent.

I know I can digitize them. What I'm wondering is why? I'm not talking about a few dozen photos. I'm talking about thousands of photos. Digitizing them all would be a monumental task. These are photos that nobody has looked at in decades.

When the time comes to tackle this project, I think what I'll do is:
1. Go through them and discard those that are purely of places and things, not of people.
2. Discard any that have faded so badly over the years that they aren't worth saving (old color photos don't age well but the black and white ones are fine).
3. Contact the few close family members who might possibly be interested in some of them.
4. Discard photos where I can't identify anyone.
5. Pick out the cream of the crop photos that are nice shots of people I can identify and discard the shots that weren't that great to begin with.

If I can whittle it all down to several albums of worthwhile shots, I think that would be a nice family keepsake for future generations. And I can digitize the "keep" photos at that point.

I have plenty of decluttering to do before I would get to this project but it's definitely on my list.

[DaveInPgh]

Digitize them.

I did this years ago back when CD burners were a more prominent means for backing up files. One of the CDs became corrupt and everything on it was lost. After that, I decided to put my photos in the cloud. The service I used was free. Until it was no longer free, which forced me to pay up or move the files.

I suspect a time will come when I will be forced to move them again. Just a royal pain.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Scan it in. Also you could scan negatives. I did it with my old photos and I'm trying to get my mom to do it. I have a negative scanner and it was time consuming. I think for my mom I might send it all out to service. Of course that's NERVE wracking what if they lose it or mess it. She'd kill me.

I've friends whose parents house burned down twice. Once by lightening and once by fire. The only thing her mom grieved a lot over and couldn't get over was the photos. She was so upset the first time. The memories.

[Thrif-t]

My little sister inherited all our parents' photo albums, they're sitting in a huge box in her basement, I'm sure being ruined by the dampness. At some point, I'm sure they'll all just be tossed. What I don't know won't hurt me.

I have a ton of my own photo albums, my poor kids. Lots are digitized but the pictures from my high school and college days are not. They're all in photo albums. And even now I still print pic's and put in photo albums. Ugh, I really gotta stop that. You only need so many pictures.

[snafu]

Interest in genealogy has been growing along with easy digital, layouts that create digitalized or hard copy albums as preferred. What will all the millennials whose moms lovingly devoted big bucks [$ 2.5 B industry] and extraordinary hours to scrapbooking 2001 - 2010 or so, do with those albums?