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We got boxes of old photos after my in-laws passed away. Lots of the photos were houses and scenery. I plan to throw those away as I doubt they mean much other than maybe to my in-laws when they were still alive.
Plenty of people sell such photos on Ebay, someone finds photos they like and save them, and you make some money on them instead of trashing them.
If nothing else, drop them off at a goodwill store or give them to an antique/book shop who like the one I used to shop at had a box of "instant ancestors" a bunch of old photos for $1 each.
True. I'm thinking I can go through them now and get rid of anything like photos of scenery. That will weed out about 1/3. I guess I could mail the others to my sister and we could take it on as a family project. That may make it a little less painful.
This is an excellent idea! If you can add another family member or two, even better. Make a party out of it.
When my mother passed, I had five huge photo albums full, plus several boxes of loose photos in envelopes. I had abut 7 boxes and 1 photo album of my own.
I did a quick cull of hers and mine over several nights. My criteria was "genealogy photos" -- I tried to pull 5 - 7 photos of every relative in various stages of life that showed something significant, like the military photos and the high school / college graduation photos. I didn't keep endless birthday party or trip photos, unless it was a group shot somewhere significant, like my uncle's family in France.
I also kept a few of the "family house" shots.
Then I started scanning and sending them out to family.
I'm still in the process of scanning and building two new photo albums, but this project went from "far to many" to something more manageable, probably around 800 pictures from . . . 4000? hard to say. What's left is labeled, so at least there are names, locations, and the date, as close as I can guess. I'm trying to think 4 or so generations ahead when someone might be looking back: what will they most want to know about Great-great-grandma?
I'm also getting ready to move, and have started digitizing the photos I want to keep. I put them on my computer hard drive, and backed them up to an external hard drive, with everything else on the computer. Also put my wedding video on there, so I don't have to pack more stuff!
This is great.
I'd also email everything to myself (and another family member--in case of my demise) so it is on the cloud. Plus I'd put an extra hard drive off site in a bank safe deposit box & update it periodically. In event of fire, flood, natural disaster, etc.-- it would be a shame after that effort to lose it.
For my mom's 80th birthday her niece took an old picture of her with her husband, her two brothers-in-law and their wives (all dead now) and a friend from New Years Eve and made it into an 11x14 for her and put it in a beautiful frame. My cousin wasn't sure who the friend was but figured my mother knew. Turned out nobody knew who this woman was. She was just sitting at their table for the New Year's Eve bash. We got quite the laugh out of it.
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