After doing some painting in our house, I stared at the bare walls and debated which photos to hang. You see, before painting, the walls were cluttered with framed family photos and other art. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to re-hang all the family photos. My 30-year-old son suggested I just toss them.
“No way!” I gasped. “These are pictures of you and your sisters!”
“Well, just take pictures of the photos with your phone and throw out the other ones. Less clutter,” he replied.
Again, I gasped. “I can’t do that!”
“Well, what do you do with a photo on the wall?” he asked.
“You look at it,” I glibly replied.
“Well, you can do the same with the photo on your phone. Again, less clutter.”
OK, my minimalist son does have a point. But if the photos are on my phone, no one else will see them. No one else will get to marvel at how my beautiful babies grew into mischievous toddlers, beguiling eight-year-olds, sassy teens, and finally, young adults with confident smiles. OK, again. So maybe no one else really does want to see those photos. After all, they have their own decked-out walls to look at.
But throw them out?
What about the photos of the rocks that caught my attention at a park in northern Saskatchewan, known for its limestone and crevasses? Or, what about my colourful garden flowers? How could I toss them?
And let’s not even attempt to open the hallway closet where several photo albums sit, collecting dust. Photos that date back to the 1970s. Old boyfriends, long-forgotten friends, late-night antics at the beach? Proof that Farrah Fawcett hairstyles and bell bottoms really did exist. I also have several USB sticks filled with photos and more folders on my laptop. Memories of vacations, events, pets, gardens, moods, and life stages are captured in the blink of an eye. Hell, I even have a hundred or so photos of doors in Mexico and cacti in California waiting for me to get creative with. The list goes on.
The launch of digital cameras made it so much easier to take multiple photos. We no longer had to buy film, load cameras, count the photos we took, unwind the film without exposing it to light, take it to a developer, wait a week, and then find a place to put those photos. Then came cameras on cell phones. Photography took on a whole new meaning, especially with technology allowing us to directly post our meals, our pets, and our faux pas on social media to share with the world.
How many pictures do you have on your phone? What are you going to do with them?
When my parents passed some 20 years ago, it fell on me to clean the house. Now I have a cedar chest full of stuff that I haven’t opened for years. I do recall seeing a lot of photos. Photos of nameless people, old cars, old houses, and old buildings. Mostly black and white, although many have taken on a sepia tinge. I remember looking through some of those photos with my mom. She didn’t even recognize some of the faces in those photos.
But, as interesting as they may be, the only time any of those photos have made it out of the cedar trunk in the last 20 years was for my daughter’s social studies project and once when I needed some vintage photos for handmade journal covers. Otherwise, they are just taking up space in an old trunk in a corner of the laundry room.
I don’t want to leave all these photos for my family to deal with.
So, what do we do with all these memories? Fortunately, there are many different options these days. You can go as low-tech as coffee table books or more advanced displays, such as online photo albums that play on a desktop frame or even through your television. You can put photos on mugs, calendars, journals, laptop covers, etc. It is tough to decide, though, especially if you tend to be a bit on the sentimental side like me.
Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Decide if you want to keep all of your photos. I’m sure I could dispose of a few. Well, a lot. I did take some and alter them using paint, ink, thread and other embellishments to create interesting artwork. But others could be tossed. Did I do that? No. They are still sitting in an album, fading away. All those photos of old, rusty farm equipment in a prairie field. Sigh
- What do you want from your photos? Are they sentimental keepsakes? Or do you want to share them with others?
- Decide if you want to digitize. Storing photos on the cloud or other digital devices can save a lot of space and keep them safe.
- Organize your photos in a timeline. Start with the oldest and work your way up to the present.
- Cull like there’s no tomorrow: do you need 10 photos of the same plant? Or the smiling baby? The ones with the finger on the corner or the ones so blurry that it’s hard to know what is going on?
- Honour your past, but don’t cling to it. Does that photo really tell a story? Does it evoke a particular memory for you? Choose photos that are right on the mark and have meaning and significance. If you can’t remember what the picture is about, toss it.
- Scan or take photographs of your old photos. You can save photos by just scanning or taking a photo of them. Of course, while doing this, you are culling, honouring your past, digitizing, and saving space.
- Display and share your old photos. If you’re going to keep them, use them!
In the words of Paul Simon,
“I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away.”
What do you do with all your photographs? Seriously, I would love to hear! Drop me a note or use the comment section below. By the way, I re-hung the photos—smiling babies and all!
Interesting Reads & Things
Home Archives – the minimalist mom
How to dispose of old photos • Karen Kingston’s Blog
Are 99.9% of Your Photographs Just Not Important Enough To Save? • Scan Your Entire Life
4 Ways to Destroy Old Family Photos No One Wants | LegacyBox – Legacybox
Wanderings Art 