How do you keep old pictures?

This has prompted me to think about sorting out the photos i have. At the moment they are in a large box. The perfect job for a wet day i am thinking.

The most important ones are in frames around the house. Sadly the rest are in boxes in storage.

Shoe box!

When we moved onto the boat I gave my daughter my ‘memory box’. Just an old she box full of photos of me, my sisters, parents, cousins, my own children, family pets etc. She looked puzzled and said “what do I want these for?” Just not as sentimental as me, obviously. Sigh ?

I’ve spent most of the morning labelling my online photos, I don’t know what’s happening but they seem to be copying themselves over and over again, all with different numbers after them and all in different files !
It’s driven me mad so I’ve just walked away, if they were all in one place I could delete them...why have I got 10 copies of part of the Vatican City? And why are some of the copies in Christmas 2016 file? We didn’t go until 2018.
I’ll leave it until I have a spare couple of years.

I have really enjoyed this thread! Interesting and informative. Junk Journaling was something I had never heard of before but I am going to try it....and 45 prints a month free...wow!

Thank you all.

I have years of photos in boxes, one for each decade until the 1990's, and then this millennium's versions on the computer, in some magic cloud. My sister in law is turning 70, my Aunt will be 100, and as we can't get out to buy cards, I thought of making a 'Moonpig' one. Have lost a few afternoons sifting through the lovely memories. Great posts Everyone.

I have mine in albums, in boxes, in a hard drive, pretty much all over. I did give my kids all their baby photos and growing up photos.

Maggie you are right about what family will want. My late Dad had loads he had taken of just scenery and we had no idea where most of them were, so they just went. And I have started to do the same with ours - especially as like you mention - there will be 20 of the same thing "in case" one didnt come out (not something we have to worry about with digital cameras when we can check immediately).

I re-photographed old photos of our grandparents, kept the digital version on my computer and gave the originals to the cousins I share those grandparents with.

Other family photos are in albums from the years where my mother or I put them into albums. I rarely look at them, as the photos I want to look at are standing around in frames.

If we ever move from here, those albums will probably be thrown out, as no-one will want them, once I die.

I’ve spent hours recently sorting ours. We've been on so many holidays for starters and I used to print out all my photos of each one. I don’t even want to look at those 20 odd views of the Great Wall mostly featuring either DH or me, so I can’t imagine that my family will. Most of them were still in the packets they arrived in, complete with negatives, and it was surprising how many I’d duplicated. I filled several bags and kept a few of each trip, sorted and dated. Family and other photos I’ve pruned and sorted into boxes with dated index cards. Unlike others I’ve emptied most of the bulky photo albums and the photos have gone in the boxes as well. I’ve got shelf space at last! ?

This was just my first sift. Next time I’m going to be more ruthless.

All photos from the past ten years or so are safely on my phone, the portable computer drive and in the Cloud, with just a few printed out for display. So much better, and I actually look at my favourites more often.

Like many others I have been going through old photos and discarding all the views, some of them even I can't remember where they are never mind future generations. I have to admit I have also discarded most of the unflattering photos, don't want future descendants seeing a fat old woman with a big nose! I also have more recent photos on Ipad and hard drive but what happens to them in the future? We used to have cine films which we had transferred to disc, but these will soon be obsolete. What about all those old video films with nothing to play them on? I think old fashioned photos are the best way to preserve images for the future.

Cornelia, have you ever come across something called junk journaling? It isn’t what it sounds like!! The end results are really beautiful. Look on utube,there is loads of examples, some brilliant,some a bit average,but a brilliant way of storing/displaying your precious pics/things.

Oh dear! I have over 50 years worth of photos. Mostly in the packets as when developed. It makes me think when I have time, I should sort them and give DDs those appropriate to them. Fortunately those taken in the last 10 years are in Icloud!!

I spent the first few weeks of lockdown sorting the hundreds (1000’s) of photos in old albums and boxes. I bought some storage boxes from Amazon, specifically for photos and tried to make some order of them. They still take up as much room on shelves! I cannot imagine what our sons will do with them! I wish I had been more ruthless, but as usual my sentimentality won.

Like Bluebell we have just started using one of the 45 free photos a month apps. We aren't at all techy so all these ways of keeping photos is beyond us . We realised that all our photos going back about 5 years are all on our phone and in serious trouble of getting lost so we have noe started going through them and just choosing the ones we like best. Between us we can get 90 photos. It is really nice to have "proper" photos to look at again. I had forgotten how much I missed it.

Applegran, I'm in the same boat as you, and resolve to do some sorting.
When our mother died, my IT-savvy sister went though everything and made a digital album for the family.
I really don't want to leave superfluous "stuff" for the ACs to sort out after I'm dead.

Some years ago, BC (before computer) I took lots of old photos of members of family, made copies of any precious ones and cut the rest up to make a collage of each member on a table mat, which was then covered with,"stcky back plastic" to make them waterproof. Table mats were from charity shop. Family love to use "their" own mat to mark the seating order at table and we also have a Christmas mat each. Keeps the memories on view rather than shut in a drawer.

They are in boxes in youngest daughter's loft.

My hundreds of photos from 1945 onwards are all in albums and indexed. Others like those of my grandma in the 1870s when she was sixteen ( Wearing elaborate dress with bustle and huge hat) and my uncles in the 1914 war etc. are in envelops.
My grandson recently married and wanted his wife to see what he was like as a boy and I was able to show all his school photos etc.

I am daunted - I have thousands of photos which need sorting. I realise that all those pictures of mountains and lakes and lovely landscapes won't mean much if anything to the future generations, and it is pictures of people which matter. Also, I may be the only one who knows who everyone is - including Victorian photos (not sure about all of these - writing names and dates on the back is so important!) and ones from the early 20th century. I think there may be too many to digitise but do want to get them sorted and in albums. There is lots to do and I'm on a long 'pause' at the moment!

I took up scrapbooking a few years ago, and made family history scrapbooks using old photos which I had copied. Since then I have bought decorative boxes for my sons and grandchildren for each to have a copies of all my photographs. I also added a family history relating back 4 generations, together with stories relating to people whose names they have heard, but never met, together with some keepsakes. I digitised all the old photos, and we have favourites on phone and iPad. We have kept our albums. I also keeping adding to individual memory sticks for each box as new photos are taken. I have, in later years, been really sorry I didn’t ask more questions about the family, particularly when I took up Family History. (I haven’t yet got round to copying the family tree which goes back so far to c1700) I hope I will have answered any questions they may have in the future. If not interested they can just laugh at the fashions!

Scrapbooking and memory albums is my hobby. I’ve so far taken most of my old photos out of all the old type sticky back albums (that yellow photos) and put them after sorting out thoroughly in acid & liguine free albums on beautiful papers with pretty embellishments, dated the photos as best I could and wrote a little memory of the important ones. It’s my hobby so I enjoy doing it. When my Mum passed away 4 years ago it coincided with us moving which ended up taking 3 years (a long story ?) so all Photos have been stored but I’m getting my craft room ready to start again. I’ve told my son where I’ve tucked information about some of the great great grandparents photos are in said albums, hopefully in many years to come my son, grandson and hopefully great grandchildren will enjoy my efforts. I’ve also made sure that I’ve got rid of any multiples or ‘boring’ photos at the same time. I think sometimes it’s nicer to flick through proper albums and the ones I’ve created so far will now stay in good condition for at least a 100 years. My Son can dump the holiday albums but will hopefully pass on the family photo type albums in years to come. Even now himself and his wife love to flick through them.

I had shelves full of old albums and I’ve been through and thrown out all the photos of views - I don’t want to look at Cyprus 1993, so why would anyone else? I digitised a lot of photos and circulated them within the family. All the photos of people have been put into envelopes classified by year and I am in the process of putting them into large albums (With the people labelled) so I can pass them on.

I've kept my old card photos in their original condition in a box. They are all in there jumbled up from various eras.
My new digital ones are just on my computer and phone.
I do like the old fashioned photos but it's so quick and easy with the new age ones!