Don't Put it Off! Organize and Scan Your Family Photos

I just finished sorting & labelling hundreds of my family pics back to 1867 because I'm preparing for a huge scanning project. 

My first task was to take the photos out of the archival boxes in which I stored them. 

Several years ago I wrote a series of blog posts as I started a huge project to sort and organize all my photos into groups and store them in special boxes I purchased online.  You can read about those efforts here:

Organizing Family Photos: Creating a Plan

Organizational Project Part 2 - Family Diaries

Organization Project Part 3 - Digitizing Family Slides

Organizational Project Part 4 - Sorting the Family Photographs

Organizational Project Part 5: The Domino Effect in an Organization Project

Organizational Project Part 6: Ready for the Second Sort of Photographs!

Easy Steps to Organizing, Scanning, Preserving & Sharing Family Photos

These are some of the early WW1 to 1960s era family photos I sorted and labelled yesterday.

What a job! But what a great feeling to finally note names, dates, and locations on all pictures. What are you doing with your family photos? If you are tackling this kind of project please remember to use pencil to notate on the back of the photos so as not to damage them.

I'll talk about the actual scanning process in another blog post so stay tuned!

Organizational Project Part 6: Ready for the Second Sort of Photographs!

In January I began my plan to sort, organize and digitize my family photos.  I ended up ordering archival boxes and sleeves from a company called GetSmartProducts

I've previously shared how I am organizing, sorting and purging these photos and if you missed those earlier posts, you can view them by clicking on the lable "Organization Project" at the bottom of this post or in the right side bar.

Pre-marriage photo box - childhood & young adult

All my family photos and photos passed on to me after family members passed away have passed the first sort. That means I have tossed blurry photos, set aside photos that I don't want but others in the family might love to have, and put all the rest into the categories I decided on in my original plan. 

I now have 5 purple acid-free boxes with family photos categorized which cover my life: pre-marriage; marriage #1; marriage #2; marriage #3; grandchildren. 

I have other boxes for other general categories but for now I'm focusing on these 5 purple boxes. My next step is to take one box and do my second sort within those photographs. I plan on putting the photos into a semi-chronological order, which should make finding duplicates easier. This should also ensure that photos of special events such as birthday parties, vacations and other occasions end up together. 

Next I will remove duplicates and place them in boxes intended for each of my children. If there are duplicates that I think my nieces, nephews, cousins or other family members would like, I will put those into envelopes to be mailed to them. 

Once I've completed this sort (the second sort), I could either begin scanning these photos or I can leave them and start on Box #2. I have decided I will finish the second sort on these 5 purple boxes before starting to scan.

Here are links to the previous blog posts about this project:

Organizing Family Photos - Creating a Plan

Organizational Project Part 2 - Family Diaries

Organization Project Part 3 - Digitizing Family Slides

Organizational Project Part 4 - Sorting the Family Photographs

Organizational Project Part 5: The Domino Effect in an Organization Project

Organizational Project Part 5: The Domino Effect in an Organization Project

In January I began my plan to sort, organize and digitize my family photos.  I ended up ordering archival boxes and sleeves from a company called GetSmartProducts

My Alcove for Binding Books

I've previously shared how I am organizing, sorting and purging these photos and if you missed those earlier posts, you can view them by clicking on the lable "Organization Project" at the bottom of this post or in the right side bar.

If you're also organizing I am willing to bet you have run into what I call "The Domino Effect". That's when you realize that in order to sort items "A" you have to make room somewhere in your house to store them, and that means rearranging/organizing a closet in Room "B". But the closet is full so you have to make room for those items (after you sort and purge of course!) somewhere else - perhaps in cupboard or closet "C" but closet "C" is also full.... and on and on it goes.

That happened to us yesterday. My husband needed more room for a project he is working on so I agreed to give up a small room in the basement that we use for binding my coil-bound books and doing lookups on microfiche. 

That meant the unbound books and the equipment (binding machine, laminator etc) had to be stored elsewhere and it had to be somewhere easily accessible. Okay my office in our loft would do nicely....IF I made some room on the big table for the equipment, and room in the closet for the unbound books.

Making room on the table meant sorting, organizing, purging and filing 3 large cardboard boxes of miscellaneous papers - business papers, personal papers, genealogy papers - it was all a big mess of unsorted "stuff". 

Because I really didn't want to start on that task, I made a decision that was unusual for me. I would be ruthless. Any old scraps of paper that I scribbled on with vague references or notes, would be tossed in the garbage. Any old research would be likewise dumped in the trash. I would only keep documents (business, personal and genealogy) that absolutely needed to be kept. That's not easy for me. I have good intentions - one day I will read through all the notes I made in 2002 and see what, if anything, needs to go into my files. But I realize that now, at this stage of my life, it is unlikely I will ever get to that. So --- decision made, no turning back and I began sorting. 

After 3 hours I had a garbage bag full of papers that my husband will dump into our burning barrel and destroy. The bag weighs over 25 pounds. I tossed old fan-fold genealogy (and you know how old that must have been). I found, and discarded, an old leather wallet that had sentimental value. I even found unopened mail from 2012!

And so the project continues. My husband has removed all his "junk" from my office credenza (yes he kind of took over my lovely office in our loft) which provides room for all the unbound books and the ones he is busy binding today.

The large table is ready for the bookbinding equipment. As difficult (and scary) as it was for me to throw out all those papers, it feels really good to have done so!

My hoarding tendencies have to be overcome at times. I hate throwing out paper because maybe, just maybe, I will need it one day.... but after yesterday I feel I'm on the right track and can't wait to get at my 3 drawer lateral filing cabinet that is crammed full of genealogy papers! 

Here are links to the previous blog posts about this project:

Organizing Family Photos - Creating a Plan

Organizational Project Part 2 - Family Diaries

Organization Project Part 3 - Digitizing Family Slides

Organizational Project Part 4 - Sorting the Family Photographs

Organizational Project Part 4 - Sorting the Family Photographs

In January I began my plan to sort, organize and digitize my family photos.  I ended up ordering archival boxes and sleeves from a company called GetSmartProducts

On a roll with my first general sort of the family photos!

The acid-free boxes and sleeves finally arrived last week! I agonized over how to begin and how to sort the hundreds of family photographs. Should I sort by topic such as "Trip to Mexico", "Wedding"? Or should I sort by decade? Perhaps I should sort by individuals - one box for each of my children, one for grandchildren? 

My husband thought I should simply sort into 3 piles - Keep, Throw Out and Undecided. That doesn't work for me but if it works for you, use it! 

Eventually I decided that I would start sorting the same way I use online search engines - in broad categories first, then refining the sort bit by bit.

Since I have been married three times (Divorce, death and current), it was easy to sort the photos into those different times of my life. I took 3 purple boxes and made a temporary label with the surname of each husband. I labelled a 4th box "pre-marriage". So I had 4 boxes that pretty much covered my entire life to the present day. 

Purge Pile

Having lots of older family photographs too I needed to label more boxes - one for my mother and her family before marriage and one for another family surname. Then I began my sort. 

As I opened each box of miscellaneous photos, I quickly sorted keeping 3 objectives in mind:

1. Purge (garbage photos, blurry photos, photos of people I didn't know, etc)

2. Give to other family members 

3. Put into my labelled acid-free boxes

It was amazing how quickly this job went! Keeping my box categories so broad was a huge help. I wasn't worried about who was in the photo, where it was taken, did I have multiple copies, etc. I was able to glance at a photo and determine fairly quickly what "era" it was - Marriage #1, #2 or #3 

I'm not done but I'm 3/4 of the way through the first general sort. It's going to be fun to refine my sorting, one box at a time - that's going to be next. 

I also had one larger acid-free box for 5x7 photos and 1 acid-free box for anything bigger than 5x7.  The one thing I am going to add is one more box for my grandchildren' s photos. I'll share my sorting strategies for refining my first general sort in my next blog post.  

Here are links to the previous blog posts about this project:

Organizing Family Photos - Creating a Plan

Organizational Project Part 2 - Family Diaries

Organization Project Part 3 - Digitizing Family Slides

Organization Project Part 3 - Digitizing Family Slides

Since I am still waiting for my archival boxes and sleeves to start organizing my hundreds of family photos, I decided to go ahead and start on my family slides. Remember when slides were the rage? That was back in the 60s, 70s and even into the 80s, then their popularity died out.

 I don't know about you but I have hundreds of slides and it's time I did something with them. The longer they are left the more they deteriorate. Besides who has a slide viewer anymore? One problem is that my slides are not organized by  event, date or any other criteria. You can see from my photo that some are in slide boxes and others are just loose.

To start my organization I bought a nifty little piece of equipment - the Jumbl Scanner & Digitizer. It scans slides and negatives and digitizes them to a memory card or the Jumbl internal memory. You can use an external power source or you can plug it into your computer via USB and use your computer power. It's on sale right now on Amazon. I am loving mine! It's easy and fast. If you want to grab one just use the link below.


  Jumbl High-Resolution 22MP Scanner/Digitizer
- Converts 35mm Negatives & Slides to 22-Megapixel Digital JPEGs Using Built-In Software Interpolation - No Computer/Software Required to Operate - Features 2.4" Color LCD & TV Out

 To begin my organization and preservation of my slides I decided my first step was to scan them all and organize the digital files later.

The box on the right of this photo are the slides I have scanned in the last 3 days. I only work for an hour at a time as the repetitive motion of inserting and removing the slides is hard on my bad shoulder due to a rotator cuff problem.

Once scanned and saved to a memory disc I insert the disc into my computer and transfer the scans to Picasa. Then I rename them, make any adjustments in contrast that I want, crop any dark edges (this only happens when I don't insert the slide accurately), and rotate them if they are sideways or upside down. Jumbl has editing capabilities but I prefer to use Picasa.

A few of the slides were noticeably backwards (spotted due to backwards writing on signs) so I flip those horizontally using a program called Gimp. You can use almost any graphic program to do this but I work on a Mac and have my favourites that I am used to.

It's a good idea to work out your naming system for the scanned slides before you start renaming them. I like to name mine as Surname_FirstName_Year_Event.

I also add names of other individuals either in the file name if not too lengthy or in the Comments section of the Information part of the photo.

The photo on the right shows my digitized scanned slide of me playing guitar in 1971. I tagged the image with my maiden name and added some detail in the Comment setion.  I didn't put my maiden name in the file name as it changed with marriage, so I prefer to just use my first name in this case. For those who might notice the Description "My beautiful picture", my husband put that!

I'm very pleased with the quality of the scans. I uploaded some to my Facebook page and my family seems very pleased to see photos of themselves or deceased loved ones from the 60s and 70s. 

Don't wait to start saving your treasured family slides.   

Here are links to the previous blog posts about this project:

Organizing Family Photos - Creating a Plan

Organizational Project Part 2 - Family Diaries

Organizational Project Part 2 - Family Diaries

A few days ago I began my plan to sort, organize and digitize my family photos.  I ended up ordering archival boxes and sleeves from a company called GetSmartProducts. A friend in Colorado used them and was satisified and since it is difficult to find an online company that will ship such items to Canada, I took the leap. 

Storage Boxes from pfile.com

Although the items will be some time reaching me, I was impressed when the company phoned me to say they were out of stock on some items. I had a choice - they would ship as the items were available, or hold until they could send as one shipment.

Since it looks like it will be 4 to 6 weeks before my items arrive, I went on to my next organizational project which was sorting my mother's trip diaries, scanning them and sharing them with other family members.

Let me explain first that my mother began going on small trips the year she retired at age 55. She always was an adventurer. At age 65 she took flying lessons, and built an ultra-light with her partner. Then just before her 80th birthday she decided she was going to embark on some adventures. Her first big trip was to Australia where she backpacked around with only a small Barbie Doll backpack she picked up at a local Wal-Mart store in Canada. 

I compiled, as best I could, a list of her various trips and the years she took them. She usually travelled alone as she preferred not having to consult with anyone else about what to see and do each day. In her years of travel (her last trip was in 2001 at the age of 85) she visited many countries. I would not be surprised if the list below has some trips missing. She often impulsively took what she called "little trips" without telling any of her children!

Mother in Australia, 2001

1971: Age 55. Her first trip was to Florida and California, making a side trip to Hawaii

1974: Arizona

1975: Maritime Provinces, Canada

1976: New Mexico, Europe (Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy)

1977: Texas

1978: Florida

1996: Australia & New Zealand (backpacking)

1997: Florida, Salt Lake City Utah, Ireland

1998: China

1998: New York

1999: Britain, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany

2000: Australia (camping on safari in the Outback)

2001: Age 85. Alaska & British Columbia, South Africa, Australia

My first step was to go through her hand-written journals and photocopy the pages. Since she wrote in small day-planners I then had to cut and paste to put several days on to one page. Then I photocopied those cut and paste pages.

Next I created "cover" sheets which gave the date and the name of the trip. Mother had also typed up notes (not the same as her diary entries) and these were on her computer. I printed those off and figured out what went where, then sorted everything chronologically.

Mother on a bull, year unknown

This morning I used my document feed scanner, the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M Instant PDF Sheet-Fed Scanner , and created 6 pdf files of Mother's trips -  20 pages each. This scanner is awesome. I can't praise it enough. It's one of the best technical items I ever purchased.

Next I will send the pdf files to my family members who want copies. I am going to mail the printed copies (after I bind them as a book) to my mother's younger sister who is 92 years old. I know she'll enjoy reading them especially because she accompanied my mother on two of her many trips.

I plan on next copying mother's daily diaries that she kept when she was not on a trip. It feels good to finally bring some organization and preservation to these treasured family diaries.

Organizing Family Photos - Creating a Plan

Today I decided the time has come to sort, scan and organize my physical photographs. I have thousands. Some are older family photos going back to 1900 from my mother, her sister, my aunt and my mother's cousin. Some are my family photos from when I was a child, and others are from my life since 1970. 

I also have my personal collection of CDVs, Cabinet Cards, tintypes, ambrotypes and daguerreotypes. I  estimated I have over 3,000 of those. 

To start with I am concentrating on my family photos. You can see most of what I have in the photo on the left.  

As you can see currently they are tossed into plastic tubs but I want to store them in archival quality boxes.

The first thing I did this morning was take a look to see what sizes of photographs I need to store. That allows me to determine the size of boxes I need and make an estimate as to how many will be required.

Then I started making my plan. First - I decided what my goal was for these photos - what is the final outcome I want? I know I want to eventually scan them all so I need one box for unscanned photos. Some have been scanned already and those are already sorted into tubs so that will be fairly quick to get into archival boxes when they arrive.

Any plan for organizing photos will depend on how you want to store them - by family groups? By time periods? By names of the person you are going to give them to? The choice is personal. I want to give some of mine to my adult children as soon as possible, others I want to keep for my grandchildren when they are older and some I want to hang on to myself.

I decided I needed 8 boxes to hold 4x6 photos, 1 box for 8x10 and 1 box for 11x14. With the 4x6 boxes I will have one box for photographs for each of my grown children, one for recent photographs I don't want to part with yet, one box for my life as a child growing up with my parents, one box for my maternal grandmother's family and one for my maternal grandfather's family. 

When my boxes arrive I will sort the photos I have already scanned and get them put away. Scanning the photos not yet scanned will be something I do in bits and pieces over the coming months.

Next week I will create an organizational plan for my personal collection of mid 19th century photos and share that. I still have to create a plan for my digitized and scanned photos so I will work on that later this week and share it here on Olive Tree Genealogy blog.