Kelly wondered what to do about the photo dilemmas in her house. With having a young family, her own photos needed help. But before she could consider working on those, she had to deal with two other large collections of old printed photos. Kelly had inherited her grandmother’s photo collection and the photo collection from her mother who was dying of cancer.
She stated, “Inheriting my grandmother’s and mother’s photos was an honor. Staring at the multitude of cardboard boxes of them – mostly unorganized – was not. I was overwhelmed. I had no idea what to do with all the photos or where to start.”
After hearing about us from a friend, Kelly hired us to get both collections sorted and preserved. Let’s walk through the sorting and saving process. Her photo collections came to us in four boxes.
In addition to the albums, envelopes and frames, some of the boxes held a multitude of loose photos.
First, we sorted by major category – by her grandmother’s photos and her mother’s photos, and by decade.
- Left front box – grandmother’s photos sorted by decade
- Left back box – grandmother’s professionally framed photos, memorabilia
- Right front box – mother’s photos sorted by decade (with a few years as well due to albums being labeled; portraits in the back.
- Right back box – empty photo albums
- Notice the blue cases – these were reels of 8mm film mixed in with the photos.
- Under the table – empty boxes and envelopes
After the First Sorting
Next, we broke Kelly’s mother’s photos down by years. Each Post-it contains a year from the 1970s on it and we simply stacked photos on the corresponding year (Found by markings on the back of the photos, etc.) The stacks in the bin are sorted by 1940s, 1950s, 1960, 1961 through 1969.
Duplicates and repetitive photos were removed as we found them. We set those aside (see right photo above with the box in right upper corner) for Kelly to review and pull out ones that she did want to keep.
Final Organization
We placed the final, organized photos in archival boxes with printed labels. The envelope standing up contains the oversized photos. The reference cards refer to an oversized photo that can be found in the envelope. Both Kelly’s grandmother’s and mother’s photo collections are contained in the Legacy Box – about 2,300 photos.
We scanned her photos and uploaded them to a Forever Account. We also provided her with copies on jump drives to save to her computer.
Kelly was thrilled with the final result. “Mollie & her team made the process easy, providing recommendations & updates along the way. Walking out with an organized box was the best feeling.”
When her mother passed away a few short weeks after the project was complete, Kelly easily found what she needed for her mother’s memorial service. She stated, “The organization made it extremely easy to find what I needed for the memorial.” We were honored to help make this part of celebrating her mother’s life possible and stress-free.
Looking back, Kelly states, “This is one of the best organizational things I’ve done – preserving these photos for my children and their children to come.”
See below for the albums in Kelly’s Forever Account being preserved for future generations.
We featured Kelly’s story in our new book “The Pixologist’s Guide to Organizing and Preserving Your Family Photos.” Click here to order a copy and start saving your own family photos.
If you need help with the organizing, we can assist you with that as well. Learn more by clicking here.