Organizing 101: Family photos

The single most useful lesson I've learned since I started this column is to keep only what you value. Still, we're human, and occasionally we neglect those things. Photo collections are a good example. They can get out of hand quickly, and the guilt those piles of smiling faces induce! All the more reason to get your collection in order, for there's no organizing project that will give you a greater sense of satisfaction or a more wonderful heirloom for family and friends.

Get started
Schedule time every week or month until you're caught up.

Gather all your photos. Look for strays in the basement, spare bedroom, dresser drawers – anywhere you might find them.

Decide how to store photos. You'll need both long-term and more accessible storage. Options include albums, frames, photo storage boxes, computer or CD files, or a combination of these.

Use same-size boxes and albums so that they'll look neat when stacked.

Sort and edit
These different tasks should be done at the same time.

If you have a huge backlog, start sorting photos by year (or by decade and then by year, for a very big collection). An economical short-term solution for large collections is to sort photos into bankers boxes (available at office-supply stores) that are marked by year. Move pictures to more expensive archival-quality photo boxes at the organizing stage.

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Edit your collection down to images that mean the most to you. Sounds easy, right? Not for most of us. Photos are probably the hardest items to throw away because of their sentimental value. Julie Morgenstern, author of Organizing from the Inside Out (Henry Holt/Owl Books, 1998), advises tossing shots “that are blurry, boring, make the person in them look awful, or are duplicates.” Good suggestions, but think twice about trashing shots that aren't technically perfect but are irreplaceable because they're either evocative of or the only record of a particular event, time or person in your life. Unlike purging a clothes closet, editing a photo collection is the one time when your emotions and instincts should be your guide.

Give duplicates away immediately.

Organize and store
How you organize your photos is as individual as your collection, but here's some general advice.

To avoid feeling overwhelmed, organize your most recently processed photos first, then work backward.

Decide how to arrange your photos for long-term storage and maintenance. Chronological order is easiest. You can also structure by events/occasions, trips, or person (the latter is great if you plan to hand down a collection eventually).

Here's a method that I know works (for me, anyway). Leave photos in their original envelopes and store them chronologically in photo storage boxes. In the top right-hand corner of each envelope, label the contents with a sticker and a few key words, like “France '97.” If an envelope contains more than one topic/event, separate the items on the label using a slash.

You can also label each photo using a pH-neutral pen (available at some photo-, art- and scrapbooking-supply stores).

Store negatives in three-hole binders with polypropylene sleeves specially designed for negatives. Label the sleeves with the same heading as the matching prints.

Albums are great for capturing special moments, events, themes or important people in your life, but most of us can't store all of our photos in them. I recommend organizing your collection in archival-quality, pH-balanced or acid-free photo-safe boxes (visit online sources, photo- or scrapbooking-supply stores) and then deciding what to highlight in albums. That will make it easy to pull favourite images out of your collection when you're ready to create an album.

Preserve
Choose the appropriate level of preservation for your needs and the value of your collection.

All photos deteriorate eventually. For most of us, using acid-free materials to mount and store pictures will be sufficient to ensure that photos last a lifetime and can then be bequeathed.

Transfer photos to a hardy medium like CDs to preserve them indefinitely. You can also post images in online albums on your own Web site. Digital cameras make this process even easier.

Display
Frame photos using acid-free materials so that no part of the photo touches the glass (a good framer will be knowledgeable about this). And remember, pictures exposed to sunlight will fade faster.