By Dee Selby, Professional Organizer, Dee’s Downsize and Declutter
Moving boxes in attics, framed pictures stored in hot garages, shoe boxes in closets, in storage units mixed with old papers and Christmas ornaments, envelopes in desks and sliding about in dresser drawers . . . I’ve seen family photos and other memorabilia scattered throughout peoples homes. . . none of it preserved to hand down the family story.
As family members of one generation age and another generation emerges completely digitized, we need to make an effort to preserve our family history in a sharable format. The time to begin is now, and the photos, cards, and letters we need to begin with are today’s. By starting today, you give yourself the opportunity to discover the unique sharable ways to keep your family story alive. I’m not an archivist, but I am an organizer and I’ve got a few ideas to help get you started.
Sharing Family Stories
Scrapbooks, photo albums, photo books and digital slide presentations are just collections; however, we want to share the family story. Take the time to identify the people, places, and dates and add that information to the project, regardless of the medium you choose.
Use multiple mediums for sharing your stories – add a handwritten or computer generated “story behind the picture” and frame both to create a gift. It’s the beautiful moments of everyday life that capture our hearts.
Don’t be afraid to involve the whole family. When my children were small, we gave them access to the video camera (old school, I know) so they could create their own retelling of fairy tales. The youngest made a great troll and roared with dramatic flair.
Everyone thinks about having a parent or grandparent record a video of reading a book to a child, but what about the other way around? Let the child tell the story and then share that with grandparents and other older relatives.
I saved letters from my grandmother while I was in college. She and I exchanged letters for four years, and many of them were in code – you had to break the code to read the letter! We wrote the events of the day in poetry form, in shapes, and on unique papers . . . it was magical. It was just a window into everyday life while I was away, but it tells the story of my family at home in a way that pictures never could.
Organizing and Storage Ideas for Photographs
Digital photos: If you’ve ever run out of room in your phone because you have too many pictures, then this is for you – upload your digital photos to a cloud storage such as Dropbox, Google Photos, Amazon Photos NOW! Once there, you can sort by the date you took them. I recommend creating folders for each year, season, or month. Then, PURGE the out-of-focus, unflattering, redundant pictures, and anything that doesn’t help communicate the family story.
Once you have the number of photos to a more reasonable number, you can start sorting by project. For example, put all the pet pictures in one folder, all the pictures from a vacation in one folder, all the pictures that have Grandma in them in one folder – and it’s okay if the same picture shows up in more than one folder. Once you’ve found all the photos for a project, figure out the best way to share them:
- Photo Calendars (which can be made any time and start with any month)
- Photo Books (these can be as simple or as fancy as you want)
- Prints to be framed
Paper Photos: If you’re trying to get an older relative to organize their photos, you can save your breath. The project is too big and overwhelming, and many times they don’t want to face what they may have forgotten. This needs to be a shared experience! Yes, you can digitize photos, but they are worthless if the people and places can’t be identified.
Newer photos may have a photo CD, so don’t scan if you don’t have to. If you have to scan photos, be sure you’re only scanning the very best ones, don’t waste time or money scanning bad photos. If you have to scan negatives or slides, your home printer MIGHT be capable with an adapter. Amazon has negative and slide scanners available, but a decent one will cost $150 or more. Incorporate any scanned images into your cloud based filing system. Physical photos can be added to photo albums or scrapbooks eventually, but in the meantime, store them in photo storage boxes. Larger photos can be stored in scrapbook page storage boxes.
Ideas for Memorabilia
Depending on how quickly you accumulate stuff, I recommend either a monthly filing system in your home files, and/or a scrapbook page storage box. These can be scanned, photographed, or added to your project when you’re ready. Larger pieces can be used to create a shadowbox display. When my husband died, we created a shadowbox display of his scouting memorabilia for each child, and just recently I created a shadowbox of my daughter’s beadwork.
If you want more organizational tips, follow Dee Selby on Facebook and her website.
How about you? What has helped you preserve your family memories? Please share in Comments below. Thank you.