I think of this as a subcategory when cleaning out a house. And again, I have learned a lot of this by having to do it. I live in a time of many picture taking changes. Flashes on the top of a camera in a cube shape. Square pictures, square pictures with rounded edges, rectangle pictures, Polaroid pictures (the original) and rectangle pictures with actual processing dates on the back are all in my wheelhouse.  Again, this might not work for you, but over time, this is a method I have developed.

Gather all the pictures, random and free range, framed and unframed. All the pictures you can find and put them in a box. Find more, toss them in the box. Seriously that is all there is to this step. Gather to deal with it later.

Once it is later, I take all the pictures and remove all the ones that are in the frames. Unless someone has said, “Hey can I have that one with the frame?”, those I leave in frames. All the others are roaming frame free.

Get a large area that can remain a mess for a bit, because this is a longer process than you are thinking it is. This part always surprises me. I think it is because there is so much emotion involved. I am currently doing my spouse’s family. I stupidly thought this would be easier than doing my family (something I have done three times now) and yet it is not. You need to take breaks, set an hour a day or every other day or what works for you, but please do not spend 6 straight hours doing this! And put all the pictures in a big pile.

That is a lot of pictures. Let’s take a moment to think about our end goal. The last time I did my family pictures was when I was the remaining person in my starter set family.  I was keeping pictures that meant something to me. Events, but also pictures that showed the inside of the house I lived in when I was 5 or the cake my mom made for the 13^th birthday. Vacations sure, but I didn’t need 7 of the same sunset or zoo animal.

An aside. Back in my youth, you could not see what you were taking a picture of before it got developed. No really. You would take like three of the same shot and live in hope. Once they got developed (so basically you bought the film and then paid to have them developed $$) you might have 4 of the same shot (8 if you got duplicates because duplicates were cheaper initially than getting reprints). Now because they were expensive, you would save all 8 because waste not want not. If you had two people taking pictures, well that number could be even higher. As the grownup in the room, you are going to need to deal with this and save future generations. But more on that later.

End goal. Are you saving these for you? For others? For grandchildren? Ancestry/Family Search? To return to random people.  When I did this final one of my family, I went through the stack and picked what I wanted to keep. Then I got a big scrapbook and put them in any old order in the book (with removable tacking so I could scan if needed). Not in chronological order or anything. Just what fit on the page. My goal was that they would be accessible when I wanted to look at them, but I did not have the bandwidth to deal with the intensity of trying to date them all. And it has worked out really well. I can flip through looking for a certain picture but then find something I had forgotten. Being a Tab A Fits into Slot B type of person, I am always flabbergasted that I enjoy this layout as much as I do. So for this one, my goal was to get them in a format I could look at and put it away for a bit. If I need to share, I just take it out and scan it.

For the ones I am working on now, it is different. I want to end up with a master album of all pictures which will go to SIL, I want one for my spouse and I want two smaller ones for the grandsons. With this in mind, chronological seemed my best bet (or at least semi chronological, the grandkids should not be beside my MIL’s wedding pictures). 

My first sort went MIL/FIL no kids, Spouse/SIL pile, Grandkids pile. Just that simple; three piles. Quick sort and after you do a bunch it gets easier as you can see what type of picture (square, square with date etc.) is what time period so you can fly through them. Once I got this done, I picked the biggest pile, this was Spouse/SIL and I quickly sorted them between young (middle school down) and old (high school up). You are not looking for perfect; you are looking to make this process manageable.

Pick one pile and date them. I found it easier to put the years on the post it notes and then sort. I also added notes (R&B 15) to the year as I uncovered them, making it easier to date pictures when only candles on a cake appear. Anything easy (processing dates on the back, candles on a cake, handwritten notes on a back), right into the year pile, everything else into a deal with later pile.

Keep repeating this process until you have all the years, and all the original piles are down to just the deal with later pile. By this point you have seen a LOT of these faces. You can pretty much tell that 1978 was the year Bill got his glasses and 1990 was the year Jim had a mustache for reasons you still are not sure of. This is going to make it easier for you to sort the Later Pile.

Later Pile is not a perfect sort (heck none of this is) go with your gut, sort through your date known piles to help you. People tend to wear the same clothes for a period of time (and have special party shirts). And that is your last step for this part.

Once this is done, you need to decide what you want to do with these. I said I would scan them. After spending weeks on that part alone… that is not going to happen. Yes, I plan on scanning most of the Pre 1970s pictures, but to scan all of them? Go back and look at that top picture, nope. Pre 1970s and highlights but not all.

My plan is to put together the main album, mark the pictures with sticky notes that I want to use for the grandkids album and the one for my spouse. As I go through making the master album, I have boxes for each of these three other albums. If I run into one of the 4 of the same pictures, those go in those boxes for each album.

Remember we said we would talk about this later. Back to the 8 of the almost same picture. I pick the best one, if I have extras and want to use them for the other albums, I save them. If not, they leave. Pictures so dark I can’t make anything out of them, bon voyage. 700 pictures of an arrangement of flowers, bye. Head chopped off and nothing but belly showing, see ya! And this is hard and not done lightly. But I just do not see keeping pictures of things you cannot even see or make out. And you are doing a major kindness for someone else who would have to deal with this.

I put them in regular scrap books with appropriate sticky stuff. Older pictures I have been known to use photo corners. Just depends on my mood and how overwhelming it is. I like photo albums because if there are things on the back I can write them on the page under the picture. I also tend to only put sticky stuff on the back corners not where words are so you can see the handwriting if you want.

My main goal is to make the pictures happy walks down memory lane and not the overwhelming task and can’t find anything, what DID that room look like prior, chaos that it was prior.

Remember tiny bites, a bit a day or every other day. It is hard and it is overwhelming at times. So tell yourself 15 minutes today is all. Maybe you will go longer, maybe you will only do 13 minutes. But a bit every day makes it easier, especially at the sorting stage. You got this!