It’s Mother’s Day and I am quite assuredly taking advantage of the day to do something for me. That’s how it should be done, right?
So, over the past week or so, I’ve worked on making additional progress with my physical photo organization. I’ve blogged several times about it over the past few months – which I do in hopes of motivating others. It is also a way to keep my motivation going too! I enjoy being able to look back and see how I have been making incremental progress. It’s cool.
In this month’s update, I now have ALL of my 4×6 photos in archival-quality storage boxes! In the last update (from March), I had recently purchased a Power Sort Box from Creative Memories and decided I liked it, a lot. So, I ordered two more and these 3 are enough to hold my entire 4×6 collection.
I LOVE how they look – all lined up on the shelf where I keep them.
Inside the box, I have my photos grouped chronologically, and each photo is going to have a plastic sleeve (of course, these are also archival quality). I am still in the process of buying plastic sleeves for them and I have actually been surprised by how many photos I have. I’ve not finished putting the photos in the first box into sleeves and I’ve already gone through 600 sleeves.
Today, I placed an order for 800 more sleeves. This will get me through the end of box 1 and probably about a third of the way to box 2. I estimate that I have about 800 photos in each box so, I probably have 2400+ photos in this 4×6 size alone. That is far more than I expected!
Next steps – continue placing the photos in sleeves, and once that’s done, make more permanent divider tabs – these temporary ones I made are quite flimsy.
Getting this process down is definitely going to make it easier once I am ready to do more scanning so I can add them to my permanent online storage at FOREVER. I also can’t wait to go through them all more closely and capture the details and stories behind them for that is truly what makes them such a treasure for our family.
Stay tuned!
Where did you buy your photo sleeves? I need to purchase sleeve but don’t which ones are the best.
Hi Lou Anne! For the 4×6 sleeves, I’ve ordered these and they are fabulous! https://amzn.to/35PXeoD – they are made of polypropylene plastic and do not contain PVC.
I can’t even imagine having that many family photos. I’m blessed to have quite a few, maybe 200. Good work on organizing them.
Hi Diane – I do feel fortunate to have so many pictures! Though, I should note these are not all from the way past – the pictures cover from about 1930 – 2005. Having 200 pictures is valuable too and I’m sure you’ve got them all documented in your family history work!
Great job with photos
Thank you!
When you are done with your photos, come back to Somerset WI for a visit and do mine.
When I come back, I’ll come prepared! 🙂
Great inspiration for what I’d like to do! Thank you, please keep sharing the journey.
Thanks, Jeanine for the comment! Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions or if I can help!
How are you filing photos that you don’t know the date for? I’m struggling with a whole bunch of photos – sorting, identifying, naming. My naming convention isn’t working for old photos I am working on now.
Hi and thank you for your question! For my physical photos, if they were taken before 1990, I have them grouped by decade primarily so if I am not sure of the date, I am usually able to guess which decade it falls into by looking at things like clothing styles, the way the photo was made, etc. Later than the 1990s, I have my physical photos grouped by year and I am usually able to guess the year based on how old people are in the picture. As for my digital photos, I have a convention that I use when I do no know the exact date. Here is a blog post on what I do – https://taneyakoonce.com/digital-photo-org-naming-files/. I will send you an email too!
Thanks so much! I had a light bulb momernt this morning before I read your post and I thought, well, I could probably guess a date by decade. But I love your “x” idea. Just ordered some more 4×6 sleeves and am scanning away. Following your progress!
That’s awesome!