The Photo Organizer Finally Tackles Her Own Photos
You’ve heard the expression, the cobbler’s children have no shoes, right?
It’s a popular saying in my photo organizing professional association. We are so busy organizing and preserving other people’s photos; we never seem to get around to our own.
Until now.
This cobbler’s daughter is taking control of her own shoes, I mean, photo collection! Finally!
You see, I am the family historian/archivist of my generation for both sides of my family.
My office has become the repository for photo albums, boxes of prints, tubs of videos, and envelopes full of newspaper clippings. Does this sound familiar?
Last year I decided I needed to finally take control of the family photo monster that was growing in one corner of the room.
Let me tell you how I tamed that monster, at least a little bit.
Step One: Gather It All Together
The first step was to get everything in one place.
The Beginner’s Guide to Organizing (and Enjoying) Your Printed Photos
While I had been gathering most things on two bookshelves in the corner, there was more in a closet and even more downstairs in my bedroom, not to mention a trunk in my great-aunt’s basement and more photo albums at my aunt’s house in Colorado.
Once I could see everything, I realized that I had a jumbled mess. I had photos from my parents, photos from my mom’s parents, photos from my dad’s parents, on top of all of my own photos, and a bunch that my mother-in-law had given me.
I was OVERWHELMED! (By the way, this is the #1 word I hear from clients, so I was in good company.)
Step Two: Sort It
Because I was so overwhelmed, step two became sorting everything by family: my own family, my parents, and each of my grandparents. This is what made sense to me.
Then I separated photos from memorabilia like certificates and newspaper articles. I figured out which boxes had been sorted already chronologically and which still needed attention.
And I LABELED each box. (Sorted, Not scanned; Not sorted, not scanned, Tormohlen memorabilia) Now, I knew what each box contained and what I needed to do with it.
Even though I still had a TON of work to do, I felt better. I knew what needed to be done. I could draw up my own road map.
I chose my dad’s parents’ photos to start.
I had accumulated loose prints, old crumbling albums, and lots of slides from the Tormohlen and Jordan families.
After sorting everything chronologically (the best I could), I started scanning.
Step Three: Photos Become Therapy
Then the Corona Virus hit.
And this project became my salvation.
I have spent time with my dad (who we lost in 2009) as a young boy.
I have fallen in love with family members that I didn’t even know existed six months ago.
I have gone down genealogy rabbit holes trying to figure out who a little boy named Buddy was in a picture with my great-great-grandparents and discovered a small piece of WWI history.
I’ve sorted, scanned, and added dates and names, the best I can, and now it’s time for the most important step of all, the stories.
I am going to be publishing the photos in a private photo gallery on SmugMug and sharing them with all of my family members.
I am going to invite them to help me identify people I can’t identify, to date photos I can only guess the time frame, and most importantly, to tell me the stories that go with these photos.
Who is the kid with the grin who lights up every picture he’s in, but then he disappears, and I can’t find any more photos of him?
Why was my grandfather building that house by hand? And where is it? I want to visit.
What occasion had everyone wearing corsages and sitting on the front porch?
And my favorite part of this process?
It may sound conceited, but I have loved finding “new-to-me” photos of myself.
Just a few days ago, I found a “new-to-me” photo of me, my cousin Kevin and my mom, all snuggled up under a blanket at my grandparents’ home.
It made my day.
It became my own personal pair of shoes.
3 Burning Questions
- What makes your family photo project overwhelming?
- What is your favorite photo of YOU that you’ve found in your family photos?
- Is anyone else highly embarrassed by the number of tube socks they wore in the 70s?
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Interested in Working with Good Life Photo Solutions?
We work in person and remotely with local clients in southeastern Virginia as well as with clients from all over the US and around the world. The first step to working together is to schedule a complimentary Zoom/phone consultation to discuss your project and goals and how we may be able to help. There is no obligation to purchase additional services. You can schedule your consultation here.
Connect with Good Life Photo Solutions
Instagram • Good Life Photo Solutions
Facebook • Good Life Photo Solutions
Pinterest • Good Life Photo Solutions
Sign up for our newsletter
Email us. We’d love your feedback and questions! Please email us at [email protected]
*This post may contain affiliate links. This means if you purchase from a link, Good Life Photo Solutions LLC may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting my small business. See our disclosure policy for full details.
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What a great inspiration – I have my collection about 90% sorted – but this has inspired me to get cracking on the rest.
Thank you, Anni! I’m so glad I could inspire you. It’s been such a fun project.
Andi
Thats a great story and great inspiration to keep going on my collections!!
Thanks so much!
Thanks, Jackie! You can do it. I know you can!
Love this so much Andi!! We’ve spent some of this time scanning my husband’s parent’s collection that we’ve had in two large boxes that I had sorted pre-pandemic. I went down the genealogy rabbit hole too. We need to talk and trade fun stories! And the joy these photos have brought to his mom in Texas uploaded online so she can see them all has made it all worth it!
Is it weird how much we love to hear other people’s photo stories? Asking for a friend. 😉
Aren’t the stories fun? I can’t wait to share with my family soon.
This is wonderful, Andi! I’m also the family historian so I read this with great interest. So far it’s not so much a project as something I play with from time to time, so I’ve never taken that big first step of assembling it all and sorting it properly. Rather, I’ve been dealing with it piecemeal depending on where my mood takes me. I can see definite advantages to organizing it all and I do have a good space to do it, so maybe I just will! Thanks for the inspiration.
This is a great story, and I love how the photos became your therapy. You have inspired me (I have a closet full of bins calling my name)!
This JUST what I needed! Thank you for this blog I will be following this as I get to my own photos and photos I inherited from my parents after their passing. I will be sharing this to my FB business page so many of my clients can benefit as well!
Thank you! Great Post!
Ha – yes, I definitely wore tube socks. I wore a lot of crazy things, but that was all part of the fun! Isn’t it interesting how the timing worked out for you? So great that you had everything gathered before the stay at home order descended. Seeing these photos brings home how significant a project this can be. I think you need to want to do it, and to enjoy the process. What makes this hard for me is the mix of digital and print photos. My husband “took over” when we went digital, and that’s when I lost control. Now it is his realm, but it isn’t organized.
Andi, This is fabulous! I love the way you describe the process. I did something similar with documents which came from my Grandmother’s attic about 20 years ago and got lost in the letters, the stories, the history. It is a fabulous project.
I’m impressed! This was a huge project. Who wouldn’t be overwhelmed at the start?
The old family photos are the best. They’re irreplaceable and they capture a time and era from so long ago. I love the one of your grandfather, The Cobbler. It does mark history and I’m not sure that tradesmen have the same unique skills today.
Your touching post reminds me of two things:
1-I wrote a similar post years ago with a similar title to yours. It talks about how my friend invited a bunch of people to her home to take care of any ‘photo business’ that they’d been keeping on their back burners. ‘Making an appointment with yourself’ and ‘putting it on the calendar’ helped me finally organize and put hundreds of baby pics in photo albums.
2-I have barely dealt with my photos since then and your post reminds me that if I break it down into small, manageable steps (just like we tell our clients), I can eventually get the huge box out of my closet and the photos ready to be enjoyed.
I’m putting Phase One of dealing with my photos in my calendar right now… Thank you!
Wow! That is wonderful! I didn’t even consider getting photos from everyone when I created my genealogy project some years ago. It’s inspiring me to start scanning my photos from my school days.
I live in an area of the country where we have hurricanes. A few years ago, that inspired me to scan everything. It was a big project, but like you said, a lovely walk down memory lane as well. I really enjoy making photobooks, and now I have material for tons of projects.
Love this post. I’ve been using the stay at home order to tackle our family photos as well, but I haven’t made as much progress as you have. You’ve inspired me to keep at it.
I have ten years of digital photos and 35+ years of prints and negatives in mostly chronological order. As an organizer, I’m appalled at how unsystematic it is beyond chronology (and how many bad, bad pictures I’ve retained). But as a random person, it’s been good “enough” for my needs. My photos are 95% friends, 5% family, and my family is too small to ever fear I won’t know who is whom. But your post makes me realize the immense potential, beyond the organizational, that working on my photo collection can provide during these overwhelming times. Thank you for sharing your path!
The Cobblers Daughter reference is priceless. So true. As an organizer, my car is usually cluttered with other peoples’ stuff which confuses my son. I’ve explained the cobbler’s daughter to him too. LOL.
I love your sorting process. I call it a “rough sort”. Doing yours by family made a lot of sense since you had multiple sources for the photos. I like chronological for just our family. And sharing them online to help identify people and share stories is the best part. So rewarding. Great quarantine project. Nicely done.
I have one of m y favorite stories. I just stumbled onto your article. My husband and i have an orphanage in Taiwan and we have 50 years of photos of kids. Then boxes of our own family. Ug. My story is this. We were in California where my mother in law was from. I was sorting through her pictures and trying to get them to the right folks. She had already passed.I came across an old photo and asked my husband if he knew anyone. He said, “No” I said.We will just toss this one. “ok”. He said “no” we will take it back to Mo. and see if any of the folks there recognize the people. That we did. The first night we were back in Mo.I asked my father in law if he knew the folks in that picture. He said,”No” .We all went to bed.I still wanted to throw the picture away but my husband refused since we were going to see some older relatives also the next day. When my father in law awakened the next morning he said, “you know that picture you showed me last pm. I think I was married to that woman for a while.” He and his present wife had been married over 50 years. Ted’s mother had never spoken of a previous marriasge and what a surprise. Come to find it, this lady was a movie star and my father in law had worked on movie sets. The got married but her family did not approve of him and it did not last. At that point we were all surprised. We did not have a computer then so I could not do research on that person. The next day the older relatives who knew Dad in Ca said ,” yes that was right” We never got the full story from my father in law but that story just about “took the cake” I am anxious to get started.Thanks
What an amazing story! You never know where a photo will lead you.
About your own photos…try not to get overwhelmed and take everything one small step at a time. Remember that you have taken a lifetime to accumulate these photos so they aren’t going to organize/preserve themselves overnight. Give yourself some grace. Also, this blog post may help you get started. https://goodlifephotosolutions.com/beginners-guide-organizing-printed-photos/ Good luck!
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