One of my favorite pastimes as a child was going through all of my grandmother’s photo albums and enjoying that visual reminder of our family history. She had albums from her wedding, her children’s weddings, and various others keeping a pleasant record of memories past. Seeing images of relatives long gone and times gone by kept us aware of the good times and bad, and that life is always changing. My grandmother was really good about putting her photos in albums as soon as she had her film developed, but I think that was more common when taking a picture involved spending more money on film and developing. In this digital age, it is easy to get behind on organizing these treasures when you have hundreds to archive. I recall my own mother always making a resolution each year to finally get her photos into albums and each year the boxes under her bed, filled with thousands of prints, remained untouched. I developed an album personality somewhere in between. I have fanatically archived every picture since the sixth grade in various photo books and scrap books, but it always takes me a year to get caught up.
Each year around December, I finally get it together and send in a huge order of photos to be printed. I then spend hours combing through them all, usually close to 700 or more prints and decide what goes in our family albums and what will be sent to inquiring relatives. I wish I could be organized enough to take on this task every three months or so instead. It would certainly be less daunting. Not to mention the grandparents and great grandparents badgering me for pictures would surely be happier. However, life just gets in the way. I already have a couple feet of a shelf dedicated to the albums. I can only hope at least one of my children share my love of the family photo archives as much as I do so we can one day flip through them together and tell stories of those times.
Confession: I’m the SAME way!! 🙁
It is so hard to keep up! I am always impressed by those people who have everything perfectly scrap booked and up to date.
I go through my pictures as I put them on the computer. However, the computer is their final resting place unless I use them for posts or on social media. I also back all of them up on passports. I literally had to go through all of the pictures I had for my adopted mother over Christmas, and it definitely took some time to go through them all.
I think that is a wonderful thing that you do that every year even if it is only once a year. I think your family will appreciate your efforts as well when they get older!!
I also have them backed up in various places. I know too many people who have lost all their mementos from house fires and I get paranoid.