Picture project

I, like most other families, am inundated with photos, particularly kid photos.  Right about the end of the the 2000s, everything became digital which presents its own problems.

But my children were born in the 1980s ad I have a ton of kid pictures of dubious quality.

Plus, not only did I have boxes and albums of pictures, I inherited all of the picture albums from my parents and in laws.

So, during the past few years, I've been working on it.  We had boxes of prints and negatives in the envelopes.  I threw away all of the negatives.  I went through all these prints and threw out half of them.  Then I took these hundreds and hundreds of pictures and put them in hanging folders by year (kinda, best guess) in five or six bill boxes.

Still too many pictures.

Ilana and I have been working on this for the last few years.  When she comes to visit.  We started out by tearing apart all of the albums.  Again throwing out half the pictures and started making new albums (sometimes using old albums) for each kid.  We didn't worry about the order, we just did it.  We were up to 4 albums per person and we decided to change tactics.  We finished the 16 albums.  Again, these are not labeled or in order.

We made a trip to the office supply store and bought 4 plastic tubs that can handle hanging folders.  Bought some of those too.  The idea, is that, we would duplicate the idea.  Each tub would have folders with an approximate date and pictures.  We've gone through 2 of the bill boxes.  Again tossing half of the pictures.

This emphasizes the obvious.  Though the family formation got going kinda slowly (jillions of baby pictures of Danny, the first kid).  But then it exploded and it wasn't very many years before there were four.

So, I would go through the pictures and Ilana would put them somewhere.  And ones I liked and there are quite a few, I kept in my own albums.

Then somebody (Matt?  Ilana?) this weekendgot this great idea that we would take the labeled albums, tie them up in ribbon and a bow and make a gift out of them.  Genius.  Matt and I did that this afternoon (first picture).  They're ready to roll.

The second picture shows the picture tub plan in process.  What I have been doing is we pack it up and wait for her to come back again.  We have that big trashed up dresser and we would just stick everything in there.

Do not be distracted by that wall of boxes behind the table.  That's all Naomi's stuff, for her classroom and  her apartment that she packed up before she went to Korea.  Then she moved in with her friend and her classroom was a whole different grade.  She now teaches first grade and that was all for fourth grade.  But help is on the way.  She applied for an apt nearby so most all that stuff can go!

Maybe, I can dream, can't I?