I COMPLETELY understand your situation because my husband and I are
both photographers and take zillions of pictures. And now we're into
digital photos ... talk about an organizing job!
Anyway, here's how we handle our continual influx of photos:
Yes, immediately organizing your photos when they come back from the
processing lab is THE only way to keep up with it. My husband and I
go through our newly developed photos together, which makes the task much
more fun and it tends to get accomplished in a timely manner.
The other very important trick is to only keep
the good pictures! Even professional photographers take many
pictures in an effort to get a good shot. The good shot is the only
picture worth keeping. When we're old and gray, will we really want to
look through tons of photos in an effort to find those precious few that
truly bring back the memory? One good image
can bring back a flood of memories, so weed out all the dumb pictures and
only keep the best.
And since most people don't take a lot of pictures, give the gift of
photos to your family and friends! One of my greatest joys is mailing
photos with a simple note or thank you after a fun event. What a great way
to make someone's day! Not only do they love having the photos, but it is
just plain exciting to get something FUN in the mail for a change! But be
sure to send them out as soon as you get them. If you wait too long, they
will end up on the bottom of your To Do stack and it will be hard to
resurrect the motivation to mail them out. Take advantage of the
excitement of the memory and the moment!
Our FAVORITE way of enjoying our
photos is to put together an annual "Year End Frame" every
January. We buy one of those 17" x 21" frames with the pre-cut,
20 openings mat, and choose the 20 most descriptive photos that highlight
the past year. We then hang each completed frame in our "Photo
Hall" in our home. EVERYONE enjoys looking at the pictures; when we
have company, the Photo Hall is always the first stop!
As for the bag of old photos you already have, go through it some night
(or several evenings) when you are relaxed and feel like a stroll down
Memory Lane. Enjoy and then weed out the bad photos, and then you will be
left with a manageable number which can either be placed in a photo album,
displayed in frames around your home, or placed in your first "Memory
Frame". Remember ... if you don't have a heart-felt feeling about
your photos now, you certainly won't have one 20 years from now when
you're staring at TEN bags of unmanaged photos.
