32. File Those Photos
Photos, like other memorabilia, seem to multiply once you have children. Parents take pictures, grandparents send you doubles, and when children get older, they start taking their own pictures of friends, school trips, and special events. You have digital photos on the computer, framed photos on your walls and shelves, and perhaps boxes of loose photos that are bursting at the seams. If you are someone who has not gotten control of your photos, then your child may be following in your footsteps and creating her own backlog. Together you can conquer this problem and create a system.
A friend of mine came from a large family with eight children. Her mother was an excellent organizer, especially when it came to photos. On her twenty-first birthday her mother presented her with a photo album that captured all the special moments in her life. I found out that she had done this for all her children. I thought, “What a wonderful present!” not only because it was thoughtful and special, but because it also represented a rite of passage. My friend's mother had preserved her child's memories in a photo album, and now she was letting go of the past and acknowledging that her child was an adult. It was now her child's responsibility to create and preserve her own memories.
As with mail, we are constantly obtaining more and more photos, so a backlog grows pretty rapidly. I am often asked, “What should I do with photographs?” There are many answers to this question, and the solution lies with you and your child. You have to decide how you like to look at your photos, not just how you want to store them. Once you organize your backlog, you have to develop a plan for going forward.
If you would like to one day hand your adult child a special gift like a chronological photo album, first you have to clear out your own backlog of photos. Start by gathering your loose photos in one location. Separate them into piles or boxes based on who you are saving the photos for: yourself, your child, your friends, or other family members. As you sort, purge any pictures that are dark, out of focus, or just plain bad.
Many people hang on to photos with the intention of giving them away to friends or family. If you have any photos in this category, now is the time to take care of them. As you come across these photos, grab some envelopes and your address book and get them in the mail with a short note. Even if you are going to see that person soon, it's better to get them out the door than to hold on to them until the next time you see that person. Plus, who wouldn't enjoy receiving a friendly note and some old pictures in the mail?
Separate the pictures that you are saving for your children by placing them in boxes for each individual child. From there you can make a photo album, a scrapbook, or at least pass on the box for your child to decide what to do with the photos.
Set aside some time to work on your child's photos with her. Bring in your photos for her and help her gather up all of her own photos. Then ask your child, “How do you best enjoy looking at your photos?” There are so many options: in frames, in albums, in collages, on bulletin boards, or on the computer. Next you can gather up any photo accessories that you may have around the house. These would include empty photo albums, picture frames, and bulletin boards. If you don't have any of these tools, wait until you know the size of the photo pile before you buy anything new. For instance, if your child wants a bulletin board for photos, you have to know whether it should hold fifteen photos or one hundred. You can choose one or more of these options when creating your own unique system. Let's review each of these options and how to use them:
Frames. Put your favorite pictures that you love to look at every day in frames. If you don't have the frames right now, take the pictures with you when you go to purchase the frames. You'll want to consider the size, color, and style of frame that will make your photo really pop. You'll also need to consider whether the frames will be stand-up (for shelves or desktops) or hanging on your wall.
Collages. Picture collages are a great way to get a lot of pictures in a small space. Whether it's on a page of a “paste in” photo album or in a picture frame, a collage is fun to make and fun to look at. You can take pictures from a single event or from a specific time and crop them to fit on one sheet. Examples would be: a collage from your child's field hockey season, summer camp, graduation, or a play that she was in. Collages also make great gifts for friends!
Bulletin boards. Like the collage, a bulletin board allows you to see a bunch of pictures at once. This is even easier to create than the collage because you don't have to crop or paste the pictures. Simply stick a pin in it and you're finished!
Computers. If your child is taking her own photos now, chances are the photos are digital. So if the child has her own computer, she can create slide shows that run while the computer is not in use, or she can put them on a digital photo frame.
Digital photos give you many options for preserving your family's memories. However, the common problem I hear is that the digital photos go into the computer and never come out! In an effort to go paperless, some families are missing out on the pleasure of flipping through photo albums with their kids. So think about whether you want hard copies of some or all of your photos.
Albums. If you take a lot of photos and you like to have hard copies of them, the album is your best bet. I like the ones with slip-in sleeves for easy filing. If you put photos in each time you get some printed, you will automatically have a chronological album of events. Many slip-in albums also have room for you to write captions. Write a quick note about who's in the photo, where and when the photo was taken, and what event was happening to enhance your memory when you look at your photos in the future.
Slip-in Album. Try a slip-in photo album as a quick, easy way to organize and store your photos.
Each of the options discussed is a great starting point. However, there is only so much space in your child's bedroom or your home to display all of these photos. So you've got to develop a system for ongoing maintenance of your photos. Here are some suggestions for routines you and your child can follow to organize your photos from this point on:
Once a month. Have your pictures developed once a month. If you have a digital camera, this entails uploading the pictures from your camera to your computer or taking your camera to a photo center where they can take the memory card from your camera and print the photos for you. When uploading to your computer, it's a good idea to save all the photos in one folder on your computer marked “Photos,” and then subfolders can be named with the month and the year (e.g., September 2010). This makes it easy to go back and find photos from a special occasion (as long as you can remember the month and the year of that occasion). Once the photos have been uploaded, order prints of the ones you want from an online service and delete the images from your camera. Keeping up with this routine helps you know which pictures have already been developed. Anything that is left on your camera should be from the current month. Once you have your prints, put them in an album, in frames, or on a bulletin board.
After a big event. Some months you may have more photos than usual because of big events. In our family, May is always a busy time because we have birthdays, graduations, 0sacraments, and Mother's Day. For these special occasions, you may want to make a photo folder that is named by the event: “John's Grad 2011,” for example. Again, upload the photos from that event and delete them from your camera. Then order the prints that you want and put them in frames, photo albums, or a scrapbook for that event. If you don't have the time to make an album right away, at least you will have all the photos in one digital file so you can refer back to it when you are ready to get creative!
Once a year. Pick a point in the year when you like to refresh your photos. It may be over Christmas break or at the start or the end of summer. At this time, gather up all your framed pictures and decide on which ones to keep and which ones to change. You can always just put a new picture on top of an old one in a frame. Each time you change the picture, you get to enjoy the memory of what is underneath, like a hidden treasure. Also look at your digital photo frame and your bulletin board and take off the old to make room for new. If you like the digital photo albums, you can go back to each file named for a month of the year and choose your favorites to put into one album, like a year in review. I love to do this at Christmastime and send copies to my children's grandparents. This replaces the process of sending them doubles of all the kids' cute photos taken throughout the year.