Got rid of several bags this weekend:
I sold probably my last bag ever of youth/kid size clothing to a place that buys decent pieces because my youngest is now in Jr size clothing. (sort of sad for me)
– but my favorite thing to donate was 12 pairs of pants that are TOO BIG for me anymore!!
Put a set of room darkening drapes on NextDoor. Person sent a thank you! Loved them .
Where is everyone?
H dropped a box off at Goodwill without being asked.
We cleaned a difficult closet–the one with albums and negatives and stuff.
Buying a scanner. It will be a job but then things like my baby picture (oh so ugly) can be tossed.
It was quite a feat to get H to join me. AH! He probably did not trust me not to just start throwing.
@oregon101: So you’re going to scan the important pictures and then toss all the hardcopies?
I found that taking a picture of a picture with my iphone gave just as good a result as scanning for most things. And of course a ton faster. Just make sure you’ve got good lighting and are square on the picture.
And I’ve been in my garage dumping some more stuff! Filled up my trunk again.
@oregon101 I would love to know the scanner you’re using! That will be my winter project. I cleaned out the closet under the basement steps this weekend. Removed a bag of old fabric and two bags of junk. Donated the gifts I have stockpiled over the years and not gifted. I couldn’t make myself throw away many of the gift bags I have accumulated though knowing how much they cost to replace. Instead I organized them in a plastic tote for future use.
I wish we had digitized our photos before we moved. We now have at least 6-7 boxes of photos and albums in a closet and no easy way to access them. Digitizing may be our winter project too.
Dealing with our photos is one of my winter projects, too. Fortunately, I’ve reached the point where I’m okay with being ruthless and will only keep good photos of people/places my husband or I remember. If it’s a truly good photo of my kids’ friends, I’ll stick it in a box (one for each kid), which can go home with the kid. We have more than you do, @shellfell, so it will be a long job.
At least 80 percent of our photos aren’t worth keeping or scanning. We tend to click the shutter multiple times for each shot, but we don’t need 8 pictures of the kids standing at the bus stop on the first day of school in 1996, just one. Also planning to discard all the negatives without looking at them. Just gonna rip off that bandaid.
I want to do this but I’m not ready yet. Someone give me the steps. Something like this??
- Sort through photos and discard those that have no redeeming value.
- For the remainder, scan them one at a time.
- Save to specific folders on one's computer.
What am I missing?
In addition to a computer folder I would scan to something like Google Photos, iCloud or something beyond relying on your hard drive to be your only access to these photos.
Researching scanners. Will let you know.
H wants to do negatives but I bet that will never happen.
First I am starting with the grade school art projects then onto the bound albums.
The shoe boxes full that never went into the albums are H’s to deal with so probably never.
Oh my this sounds like a lot. Makes me want to get a newer phone as my pictures are not that great and
Some of the projects cannot be scanned
When we were sorting through things before the move, we got rid of negatives, and duplicate and/or horrible photos. I also have my mother’s and grandmother’s albums with photos going back to 1900. I got rid of the photos with people I couldn’t identify or who I knew weren’t anyone important in family history (my grandmother collected photos of all the neighbors & their kids).
I’m so conflicted about getting rid of all the pictures. My mother in law was the only child of an only child, and we inherited all of those albums and pictures. We have no idea who is in them, so if I do scan them I will likely share them on Ancestry or with all family members that we can find. I have so far kept every image taken of my kids and the only time I was glad to have extras was when my sons classmates house burnt to the ground - I was able to share some pictures of them together at church and school. but 99.9% of the time they’re just taking up space.
@VeryHappy … for scanning, you’ve got it except that I would recommend writing on the back of the picture who, what, when, where and scanning to PDF double sided.
DH scanned ours into jpeg, so the double side is a “different” image than the front. I live in fear of the order of the directory getting mixed up so that we don’t know what name goes with what face.
But if you scan as PDF, then each image is together front and back.
If you are ruthless with the number you scan, you can also rename the scanned images to be meaningful (instead of doc01.pdf). But with 1000’s that we did, just scan and keep scanning.
I sorted AFTER scanning and sent the hard copy prints to friends and family in batches.
If I save them to my computer and label each one with specifics-- eg, “S2 Kindergarten 1990” – do I need to label the back and do the double-sided scan business?
ETA: I back up my computer weekly onto a separate backup hard drive.
@VeryHappy , well, you might be more organized and perhaps have fewer photos to deal with. There was no way we could sort into things like S2 1990… how would you sort the ones that have both S and D in them? And do you try to remember the kids names that came to the Kindergarten birthday party in 1990?
DH scanned most of them in huge blocks of time and he had no idea in many cases who the people were.
We stored them on the computer in “binders” with an attempt for year if they were ours. Just by some ID such as RedYellowPhotoAlbum, when they were Mom’s, BlackFallingApart or BlueNotFallingApart for Grandma’s. Scanned photos was as good as it got sometimes.
Then in the past 5 years, I’ve been sorting them into folders with random lables … Ancestors, known and Ancestors(Maybe), unknown, Kids, Childhood Family… … … It is a mess, but at least it is a computer mess and not boxes and boxes.
Google used to have a photo service called Picasa that had facial recognition and would try to identify faces and tag them. I need to find the current version of that . . .
For the ones that have both S1 and S2 in them, I might have a folder labeled S1 and another labeled S2 and save the photo in both folders.
I posted my bag a week post in the good buy of the day thread over the weekend. Fortunately someone was willing to delete it for me.
My son and I worked on his room, and filled a few garbage bags with things to donate. Plus I finally just dumped a ton of white athletic socks that belonged to my kids. One hasn’t lived here in 2 years, and the other hardly ever wears them.
Last time someone was supposed to pick up ourdonations they didn’t show. I bringing things back into the house once they’ve been sitting outside all day. Hopefully next time will be better.
I’m hoping this winter we will get our house in a little better order. Every little bit helps.
“I’m so conflicted about getting rid of all the pictures. My mother in law was the only child of an only child, and we inherited all of those albums and pictures.”
Then don’t do it! if your goal is to declutter. move on and save everything for now, Pick a new category.
My thought is that pictures don’t really take up that much room. So you have a few bins of them? So what. They take a lot of time to sift through and aren’t worth the squeeze to start there as a way of making space in your house. Save that project for the very extreme END of your mission to clean things out. The LAST thing to discard is family history. If anything–(but don’t discard stuff)–pick out a few of the best and write on the back in pencil a description of who and dates/occasion on the back of what you do know) Keep those separate. Or at least on top.
Want some real space and instant satisfaction? Throw out a couple pillows and an old bedspread or comforter. Add a wicker basket or two that’s hanging around but you don’t use. Discard some large holiday decoration that you haven’t used for a few years (after all they only get used once a year anyway). Get rid of craft projects that’ll never happen. Now you have instant room for the photos!
When you drag stuff out concentrate on what you can discard in VOLUME.
My mantra is “Don’t sweat the small stuff” (you can keep a WHOLE lot of small stuff if you get rid of the space hogs).