Marie Kondo strikes again: dealing with photographs

[disneysteve]

Time is money.
Space is money.
Clutter is inefficient use of both space and money.
As detailed in my decluttering thread, we've been on an ongoing mission to get rid of clutter.

It saves time because we aren't always searching for things that we know we have and just can't find.
It saves money because numerous times we have re-bought something even though we knew we had one "somewhere under the roof" but didn't know where.
It earns money by selling unwanted items on ebay or at a yard sale or donating them to charity and taking a tax deduction.

A while back, we both read Marie Kondo's book. There was one thing that she wrote about that I just tucked away in my mind as I wasn't ready to tackle that project quite yet: dealing with photographs.

I was raised in a family that was always into photography. From before I was born, my dad always had the latest camera, whether it was a Brownie, a Polaroid, an Instamatic, or a Super 8 sound movie camera. Over the years, we accumulated closets full of photographs, slides, and movie reels. When my mom sold the house 9 years ago, that stash of family memories came to reside in our garage. I have at least 6 crates of photo albums alone. Add to that the fact that I was also very into photography from a young age and have several boxes of my own photos.

I've thought for a while that I wouldn't touch the family photos while my mom was alive, but I changed my mind and decided to try addressing that part of the clutter. While I was working in the garage today, I decided to just go through one photo album. I removed all of the photos and sorted them into two stacks: keep and trash. When I was done, I had 53 photos in the trash pile - from one album. Again, I have at least 6 crates of albums. Each crate holds 5-6 albums. I could potentially get rid of a couple thousand photos if I go through them all in the same fashion. I can also condense down the huge stack of crates into a couple of small boxes since the photos take up far less space in a photo box than they do in the albums.

I know what I'll be working on this winter.

[disneysteve]

I forget to say how I was sorting photos.

Basically, I got rid of any photos that were of places and things, not of people. So if there were photos from a trip to the beach, I kept the photos of me and my family members. I trashed the photos of the beach, the lifeboat, seagulls, the ocean, etc. If we were at the zoo, same deal. I kept photos of people in front of the cages and enclosures but trashed a photo of a giraffe or tiger. What do we need those for?

Since we always traveled a lot and always took a lot of photos, there are loads of pictures of sights we've seen but most of them really hold no emotional attachment. I'm sure I'll save a few here and there but I'd rather have the people pictures.

[creditcardfree]

That's how I would sort pictures too...keep the people pictures. Great start!

[LivingAlmostLarge]

I need to look at mine that my mom dumped on me. And my parents and in-laws I am shuddering at how many they have. But it sort of is nice to look at old video. We have to take my in-laws videos and figure out how to put it online.

[scfr]

I don't know if digitizing is of interest, but just thought I'd throw out that Groupon has Legacybox (mail in digitizing service) packages for sale and are running an extra 20% off sale until midnight today with the code FLASH20.
That service includes only a DVD; you pay extra if you want a thumb drive.

[disneysteve]

Legacybox (mail in digitizing service) packages for sale and are running an extra 20% off sale

I just looked at their site out of curiosity. Wow! That is really expensive! It's basically $1.00/picture (before the 20% discount). Even at 80 cents/picture I would never even think about spending that kind of money.

If I had a small number of pictures to digitize, I would just scan them in myself. If I had a large number, it would probably be cost effective to purchase a dedicated scanner (not the one built into the printer) that could do them in bulk.

[scfr]

[QUOTE=disneysteve;442126]

Legacybox (mail in digitizing service) packages for sale and are running an extra 20% off sale

I just looked at their site out of curiosity. Wow! That is really expensive! It's basically $1.00/picture (before the 20% discount). Even at 80 cents/picture I would never even think about spending that kind of money.

If I had a small number of pictures to digitize, I would just scan them in myself. If I had a large number, it would probably be cost effective to purchase a dedicated scanner (not the one built into the printer) that could do them in bulk.

Nope - I was talking about the Groupon (additional 20% off today). https://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-med...by-legacybox-9

[disneysteve]

Nope - I was talking about the Groupon. For example, 250 photos for $79.99 - 20% = $64 = 25.6 cents each.

Okay, that's not as bad though still not cheap.

I wonder how much a decent bulk scanner is? ETA: I found one on Amazon for $650. Hmm. Maybe I'll buy one and go into business. At $.25/pic, I only need to scan 2,600 photos to pay for it.

[scfr]

Okay, that's not as bad though still not cheap.

I wonder how much a decent bulk scanner is? ETA: I found one on Amazon for $650. Hmm. Maybe I'll buy one and go into business. At $.25/pic, I only need to scan 2,600 photos to pay for it.

If I had 2,600 photos I wanted to digitize, I'd spring for a scanner too!
God help me if I ever find myself in that situation.

[snafu]

I'm slowly, going through photos ascribed as my rainy days project. I've been eliminating pictures of unidentified people while trying to create 'story-lines' like birthday parties, grandparent's events, 1st days at school, swim and hockey highlights etc. I really like the results of creating a storyline for each of our guys from their annual school photos when I got their University grad photos.

My brother worked for years on a photo family tree project using a giant, fabric, wall poster. He used as many pictures as he could collect from extended family and seemed to enjoy the challenge.

Now that all the scrapbook stores have vanished and new crafts hold interest, I wonder what happened to all those millions of intricate albums. I presume they are mouldering in boxes and bins in millions of garages.

[scfr]

Regarding the side business comment - I'll bet people would rather turn over a box of photos to someone they know or a neighbor than mail them off to a strange company. Not a bad idea, especially if was something you & your wife wanted to do together.

There was a teen in my old neighborhood who had a side business converting VHS tapes to DVD. I think his parents had a machine and let him use it during the summer. He converted my wedding video for me.

[disneysteve]

If I had 2,600 photos I wanted to digitize, I'd spring for a scanner too!
God help me if I ever find myself in that situation.

I wasn't saying I had that many, though realistically I'm quite sure I have more than that. I don't know that I need to digitize them, though. I guess it would be kind of neat because I could make discs for all of my cousins with old pics of themselves and their parents and grandparents.

Regarding the side business comment - I'll bet people would rather turn over a box of photos to someone they know or a neighbor than mail them off to a strange company. Not a bad idea, especially if was something you & your wife wanted to do together.

I wasn't looking for a side business but I bet this would be a pretty easy one to get into.

[creditcardfree]

Regarding the side business comment - I'll bet people would rather turn over a box of photos to someone they know or a neighbor than mail them off to a strange company. Not a bad idea, especially if was something you & your wife wanted to do together.

There was a teen in my old neighborhood who had a side business converting VHS tapes to DVD. I think his parents had a machine and let him use it during the summer. He converted my wedding video for me.

I've actually thought starting this kind of business, but figure I need to tackle my own before doing it for others. I better get on it!!

[disneysteve]

I did some more work on the photo albums today.

So far, I have gotten rid of 4 albums and discarded 150 photos. The remaining photos from those albums are identified and dated and in a small box. The box will probably hold 15-20 albums worth of photos.

I also had a thought about digitizing. In the albums, the photos are 4 to a page. There's no reason why they can't be digitized that way. It would be a lot faster for me to lay out 4 photos at a time on my scanner and scan them that way rather than one at a time. Anyone looking at them certainly wouldn't care. The resolution would be the same and they could zoom in if they wanted a closer look. That still isn't on my list of things to do anytime soon but if I do decide to digitize them, that's probably the route I will take.

[FLA]

I had both of my grandmother's photos and made the decision to take apart the albums, scan the photos and makes photobooks for my aunts and my mother and father and myself. I thought I still kept the photos but they did not show up during a recent basement dig out. I feel a little sad if I did get rid of them all but keep reminding myself that the best shots are in the photobooks.

I have all my childhood albums up to the present (although the later yrs are just digital) and I am dreading dealing with them. I do not want to spend weeks again scanning in photos, trimming the edges and all the rest. I think I might buy archival photo boxes and take pics out of the albums and try to sort by year. I stopped making organized photo albums when I had 2 toddlers so I have boxes and boxes of unsorted prints. Ugh.