Downsizing your home can be stressful and overwhelming. When my grandmother relocated from the apartment she’d lived in for decades, it was filled with things... SO.MANY.THINGS. Shoes, clothes, magazines, trinkets and, of course, her life’s worth of photos. Everything was piled everywhere, hardly any of it being stored properly. Her photos ended up being distributed between her three children, thus separating her life’s story into three new households. Her story matters* and so does yours. Your life’s story is a treasure for your grandchildren and the future generations of your family. Studies have shown that KNOWING their family history, their family’s struggles and triumphs, has a tremendous impact on a child's self-esteem.
 
Your photos are an IMPORTANT piece of this legacy. Photos allow future generations to literally SEE what life was like in the past, the clothes, the cars, the households their elders lived in. In the immortal words of Bob Dylan, “The times, they are a-changin’,” and nowadays at an unbelievably fast rate. Having an organized photo collection helps document your story to show future generations what life was like in the “olden days.”
 
But where to start? Many of my clients feel completely overwhelmed when they reach out to me for help. Photos are strewn throughout their households, in closets, drawers and boxes. Many of them have inherited photos from loved ones and they’re at a loss as to how to begin the task. There are a few simple steps you can take to organize and ultimately DOWNSIZE your photo collection.

1. Go through your home and pull out your photos from all their many hiding spots. Check under beds, in drawers, closets, your basement, wherever you think your photos may be hiding. Collect all the photos you can find and put them in one location of your home. With my clients, it’s often the dining room. This will give you a great idea of the size of your collection and the task at hand.
2. Most importantly, don’t let the size of your collection overwhelm you. Tackle the organization project one box or bin at a time for an hour at a time. You might find that looking through your photos and reminiscing can be emotionally draining.
3. Find a large table in which to work. When sorting through your boxes, put photos into piles according to categories. For example, childhood, school days, birthdays, weddings, children, pets, cousins, etc.
4. At the end of each working day, keep the piles intact by placing them into gallon-size Ziploc bags.
5. Once you have categorized all the photos in your collection, take each category one at a time, look through them carefully and throw away any duplicates, any photos of people you can’t remember, blurry photos that have no meaning, excessive scenery, etc.
6. Once this pruning step is complete for ALL categories, you can then arrange your neatly categorized piles into an archival-quality photo storage box. These often have separate sections inside that you can label according to category. For example, the section might be titled “Weddings” and each individual tab can then be labeled with the names of those people getting married.

 
And voila! Your project is complete! Depending on the size of your collection, you may whittle your collection down to just ONE storage box. One of my clients ended her project with three boxes that each held 2,400 photos. However, she is now able to open the boxes and clearly see photos from her travels, from family reunions, school reunions, etc.  And when her nieces and nephews come to visit, she is able to sit with them and share her life’s adventures with them in a meaningful way.
 
 *My grandmother passed away suddenly in May 2014 and like the cobbler with no shoes for her family, I never found the time to document her stories. I had strong intentions to have her select 20 of her favorite photos, document her stories about each of those photos and create a book of her memories. Alas, I lost my chance. I have to rely on the memories of the stories she told me, and to be honest, I don’t have a very robust memory. Born in 1923, she lived a fascinating life and I want my two children to know the substantive woman who was their great-grandmother. So if this article does nothing else, I hope it inspires you to start documenting your legacy both for your current family and future generations. Your STORY matters.

It’s safe to say many of us have experienced the following: grieving a lost loved one, tasked with cleaning out their home and coming across a photo collection piled into dusty cardboard boxes. So what do we DO with these photos?

First, determine the best family member to take ownership. I have a client who found out from a sibling that her grandmother’s boxes of photos were out on the curb waiting for the trash truck to pick them up. Her father, for whatever reason, felt no emotional connection to the thousands of photos his mother left behind. However, those photos were extremely meaningful to this woman’s grandchildren. So they were rescued from the curb and ended up at my client’s house where, even though she knew she wanted them, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them (more on that in the steps below.) So if you’re tasked with clearing out a home and have no desire to keep the photos yourself, ask your family who’s interested in taking them. I can guarantee you that photo collection is valuable to somebody.

Second, take your time. Sometimes the grief is too raw and painful to dive right in and start an organizing project. I had a client hold on to her sibling’s photos for years before she initiated work with me. And even then, there were moments of breathtaking pain as she sorted through her sister’s memories. But there can also be moments of sheer joy. Another client who stored her mother’s photos for years was surprised to see baby pictures of herself that she’d never seen before. So, store them well, in enclosed boxes to keep the dust at bay, in a temperature-controlled area either in your house or at a storage facility. They’ve lasted this many years, so another few months or years won’t damage them beyond repair.

And third, when it’s time, enjoy the organizing process. You’ll find it easier simply because they aren’t YOUR photos. You won’t recognize half the people in the pictures, so you can either pass them along to another family member who might or you can throw them away with minimal guilt. Also, it’s a wonderful opportunity to get to know your loved one better, to see through their eyes what they felt was important enough to document on film. One of my clients found dozens of pictures her grandmother took of flower arrangements. At the start, she wanted to keep them, but as the process moved along, and we found more and more of them, she realized she could toss most of them. Still, she found humor in the photos and was able to learn a little bit more about the grandmother she’d lost. It’s always difficult to lose a loved one, but the photo legacy they leave behind can be a great source of comfort as you move through your grieving journey.

Although it's not well understood by the general public, your digital assets are at peril in the event of your death. Many online services terminate member accounts upon death leaving family members scrambling and fighting to regain access. You may think your photos are stored safely on Shutterfly or Flickr or one of the multitude of photo sharing sites, but once you're gone, so are they. Same goes for your iTunes purchases. Hard to believe, but it's true. If this concerns you, Gen-Ark is a new company who is dedicated to providing PERMANENT storage solutions for ALL your digital assets. They will even upgrade various digital formats as older ones become obsolete guaranteeing your digital assets become a legacy for the future generations of your family. If you want to learn more about the important field of digital asset preservation, take advantage of their FREE webinar series. The first installment is scheduled for August 14th and will introduce you to the concept of digital asset preservation. This is such a new field, that even lawyers are scrambling to make sense of it all. So be on the forefront and sign up today!

As part of the human experience, we all lose loved ones. Sometimes after a life long-lived and sometimes entirely too early. Many of us inherit our loved one’s belongings which often include their photo collections. These boxes come home with you, are too painful to face and get pushed into a closet to deal with later.

However, once you’re ready, these photos can be an incredible way to reconnect with your loved one. I have witnessed several clients face these boxes and have seen the comfort their photos bring. You might come across photos of yourself you’ve never seen, happy memories from times shared with your loved one. You’ll also get a glimpse into your loved one's soul, to see the world as they saw it and to learn more about their passions simply by what they chose to photograph. You might learn things about your loved one you never knew, like trips they took or work experiences they didn’t discuss. Our photos become a visual documentation of our lives, a visual autobiography, and viewing your loved one’s photos allows you to experience their lives as seen through their lens.

Once you’ve sorted through your loved one’s photos, it’s important to preserve, protect and share them. A reputable company like Fotobridge can scan and digitize them for you and, in turn, giving copies of the digital files to other family members can become a priceless gift. Making sure they are stored in an archival-quality box in a temperature-controlled area of your house is extremely important. And creating traditional photo albums or digital photo books and slideshows will help you share their memories and bring your loved one’s photos back to life again.

Just as the grieving process differs for everyone, there is no magic amount of time when you’ll be ready to open these boxes and face these photos, but once you're ready, you might be pleasantly surprised at the comfort these photos bring and the sense of intimate connection you feel upon seeing the world through their eyes.