Photo Project 2007

As I may have mentioned I have BOXES of posterity. In our upstairs office, er, I mean junk room I previously stored 4 storage boxes and two bags of family photos. When I say box, I mean one of the big plastic ones from Home Depot. So this week I decided to take action and sort through them, one box a day until they are cleaned out, sorted out, sent out to other people and finally scanned and posted online. My goal is to get all our photos down to about 4 photos albums that are easy store. I mean, who on earth needs boxes of unsorted photos?

Yesterday I started with the heaviest box and I threw away one and a half garbage bags of photos. Seriously, the first bag got so heavy I had to start a second bag to haul to the garbage can in the garage. While I was ruthlessly tossing photos I learned a few things about my mother.

1. My mother was a terrible photographer. Her heart was in the right place, but she consistently left peoples heads out of the photo. She also couldn't focus a camera very well.
2. She also bought doubles of every roll of film.
3. She must have INTENDED to go through the photos she took for 15 years, but never got around to it.
4. She really liked to take pictures of gardens.

So this whole thing has been pretty interesting. Today I tackled the box with the family slides in them. Thankfully as disorganized as my mother was, my grandmother was the opposite. Every slide is marked with a date, the correct direction it is to sit in the slide carousel and the number in the series. There are a few that are out of order, but it should be easy to send these off to be converted to photos. Although, there are about 200 hundred slides and at .22 each, that's about $50 not including shipping. I don't know if there are more slides tucked away somewhere...I have two boxes and two bags to go here folks. It could cost more!

My goal was to get the photos posted online for my extended family to view and order from should they wish. What good are family photos if no one gets a copy, or can even view them? The next project is to start the albums for my kids. We have scores of photos on our hard drive. I want to either print them or put them on a CD. My friend had his hard drive crash and he lost ALL the photos of his son from birth to 2. How hard would THAT be? So my goal is to get it done now. All part of the less clutter, less to maintain program I am on.

What are you working on lately? Has Spring cleaning hit you yet?