It took me many years to get to this point but I finally gave all the pictures of the kids to them to keep. They were really happy to have them. Of course there a few that I kept. I dispersed the family photos among everyone.

I have a plan. Not that I've put in action mind you. When we moved, I got all of the photos together and ended up with six large boxes. I've tried putting them in albums, but haven't kept up.

This summer I would like to power sort them. Throw away all of those extras and get them in a somewhat dated order.

I'm then hoping to put things into four groups. One for each kid. Set aside things like the pictures of my son's Scout activities and just make up an album for those, since the other kids won't want them.

My kids are still small so I will need to store them for a long time. I'd like to put together a chronoligical album for each of them. All of the birthdays in a row so they can see how they grew. That kind of thing.

We have a tradition of on the first day of school, each child stands in front of the front door with Dad. It's fun to set those side by side and see how they've changed.

The most important thing for me is to learn to get ruthless with these photos. We always had 3 copies of each print made and now that my MIL is gone, we got all of her copies back and I imagine it will be the same with my mom in not too long. Even if it's a good shot, how many photos of my son's high school graduation do I need?

Having been married before, a bunch of mine are hard for me to keep and hard for me to get rid of. College graduation pictures of me with a no longer wanted DH in the photos. Sigh.

My husband's aunt gave a large number of her photos to one of her grand-daughters and she cut them all up and made a giant collages (did I spell that right?) The family enjoys looking at them and it used up a large number of shots. Good, bad and ugly but fun. This is something the grandkids would enjoy.

Gloria

When we get the "school picture" size photos in Christmas cards I put the ones I want to keep into the
"photo sheets" designed for baseball cards. The ones I don't care about (co workers kids I've never met etc) I toss.

A few years ago, my friends mothers house burned down, lost everything, including all pictures. I went through mine and sent her several of my friend, plus all I had of her son that was killed in a car accident.

As for all the others, my hubby has a goal this summer of scanning them and putting them on disk so we can make copies and send to the appropriate folks to enjoy.

ellie

I'm so jealous you are all having problems with excess pictures. I had a mold claim 4 years ago and the company holding all of my possessions vanished off the face of the earth before returning my photos, papers, etc. I have NOTHING. No pictures of my kids, family, parents, grandparents - nothing :(

Aww...Lisa, I'm sorry to hear about your loss. Sure puts our predicaments into perspective, doesn't it? Thanks for the reminder.

My sister and I made a deal. When we get photos developed, we give the negatives to the other one to store. That way, a food or fire could destroy our pictures, but we can get duplicates made. Her box is safe under my bed.

Excellent idea jannie. Pictures are precious in my eyes.

Lisa,

do you have friends/family members that may be willing to do like I did and send you some pictures of your family that they may have?

Even though they weren't the highest quality (taken with a 110 back in our childhoods) Mrs Shaw was very happy to get pictures of the kids. Someone may be willing to do the same for you.

Ellie

Ellie, between my daughter and my long time girlfriend, I now have about 30 pictures. It's wonderful but it is a far cry from an entire buffet drawer filled to the brim. They made me a photo album. Oddly enough the one thing I found I missed the most, other than pictures, was a baggy full of hand made sympathy cards made by my 4th grade classmates when my Daddy died.

It took me decades to throw away the negatives of photos of folks I don't know - never did know - but when my folks passed on, I got the negatives!!!!!! Even w/ my own photos, I don't think I have ever had more photos made from negatives. Thank goodness for digital - no film - no negatives - but it still gets to be a bit much.

I love the idea of cutting up photos and making collages. I have so many baby pictures that really aren't keepers, but how can I bear to throw them away?

Maybe I can get dh to do that with the 100s of photos he has of planes taken at air shows....

The only valuable thought I can make about pics is write date and ID on back of each so that anyone who has to dispose of them can keep, pass on or toss with no qualms. Some of our family photos are confusing as cousins do resemble each other during different periods and even parents can't identify. Scanning into a computer is a great idea but do I have the courage to toss them after this or just create another pile of stuff?

Scanning into a computer also requires periodic maintenance as storage formats disappear, as whatever you saved the files on dies, as picture-file formats come and go, and as disasters happen ... Digital doesn't always mean forever.

lisa. excuse my ignorance. but what's a mold claim?
never heard that one.
i told my kid when he became an adult to take all his pictures but two.he thought i would keep 11 shoe boxes full of pictures. and i did. for the next ten years or so. i needed room in the closet. told him it was his last chance or else. i would try to unload them on family members.maybe being older caused him to become sentimental.
but not smarter. that boy believed me.