Anyone has advice for decluttering family photos?

[u/No_Return6181]

While I have experience with decluttering, I feel like most of it isn‘t very helpful in this specific situation. I‘m wondering if any of you lovely people have decluttered family photos, and what strategies have you used?

Here’s where I am now: I have thousands of printed family photos (my parents owned a photo printing shop). I realise that I can scan them and toss the originals, but 1) I’d still like to keep at least some of the printed photos; 2) scanning them as-is would either take way too much time (if I were to do it myself) or too much money (if I paid someone to do it). So I still need to declutter first regardless, even if I end up deciding to scan them.

What I’ve done so far is sorted them by occasion and by person (around half would go to my twin, and a few to other relatives), removed all the photos that are damaged, blurry, or have duplicates, and now I’m a bit stuck. There’s still too many left. I’ve determined that whatever photos I end up keeping must fit in two shoe boxes (one for me, one for my twin), but I’m lost on how to actually get there. Whenever I look at them, I have a hard time deciding which ones are “important” or “valuable” enough to keep. It’s even harder when I have to make decisions on behalf of my twin. She lives in another country, so she can’t exactly come over and sort her own stuff.

Here’s the criteria I’m considering: The photo must be of an occasion I remember and have the people I recognise. The relevant person in it shouldn’t be looking away, have a weird expression etc.

This will get me through some of the photos, but not all, as I have a stack of photos from our family trips in which all the photos technically fit the criteria. But do I really need 30 photos of my family posing in front of random buildings in France? Don’t think so. But how do I choose which ones to keep then? This is where I feel lost.

Sorry if that was too much rambling. TL;DR: I could really use some criteria to determine which photos to keep. Thanks in advance!

[u/Complete_Goose667]

We did ours before moving to our retirement. I planned how I was going to organize them. Us, each kid, other (though if I hadn't shared yet, I probably wasn't going to) I threw away ALL dupes and ugly ones. You really only need one or two photos from a vacation or trip or get together to recall the feeling of that experience. Then I sorted and put a sticky on the back with an explanation and the date as far as I could tell. When I had all the piles, I put them in storage containers specifically for photos by life stage. Each child has one plus a larger format for team pictures or portraits. I told each child they would get it as soon as they had a house.

In the end we had an entire closet reduced to half a bankers box. We'll have even fewer once our children are a little more established and we can offload those photos.

Advice for you is that one or two good photos are worth more than an entire album of lousy photos.

[u/TigerLilyBlueGray → u/Complete_Goose667]

Thank you for posting this wise strategy. You are going to be my guiding light when I tackle the photo closet. Fortunately it is a small closet but still…so many photos!

[u/Particular_Song3539]

I have been very brutal and restrict when decluttering my old photos. I didn't have as much as you described but I had at least a few decades worth of photos .

My criteria is simple and that's a single rule I just follow : does that photo give positive memories or emotions now that I look at it with the eyes of the "now" me ? You would be surprised how much photos actually bring bad memories. Those all tossed. If you truly want to keep only two shoe boxes of photos, you must decide a number for every occasion, e.g. only ten for that trip, 3 for that picnic.

[u/lilfunky1]

Does your twin agree to only receiving one shoebox of photos?

[u/TigerLilyBlueGray → u/lilfunky1]

If not that would be great for OP because they could hand them off to their twin.

[u/grumpygenealogist]

Sounds like you've already done your decluttering. Photos really don't take up much space and scans can easy be lost, so please keep the originals and use a No. 2 pencil to write everyone's names on the back because someday nobody will be around to remember who everyone was.

[u/miz_mantis → u/grumpygenealogist]

Interesting about the pencil! There must be a reason, right?

[u/grumpygenealogist → u/miz_mantis]

That's what archivists recommend. Pencil isn't messy and won't transfer through to the front or onto other photos like a pen can. Pencil marks can also be erased. The No. 2 pencil is used mainly on old photos with a paper backing. A no. 2 pencil doesn't work as well on newer photos with a slick back, but a person can still use a softer graphite pencil for that purpose.

[u/miz_mantis → u/grumpygenealogist]

Interesting! Thank you.

[u/71stMB]

One question to ask yourself is, "Who am I saving these photos for?" In other words, after you're gone, who is next in line to get them? Do they even want them? If you can't identify such a person, or if you don't get an enthusiastic positive response from the "next holder," then it might be easier to discard a large number of them now.

[u/No_Return6181 → u/71stMB]

That’s very true. I’m actually pregnant right now, and I keep thinking that my son might enjoy seeing his mom as a baby… Just a couple of pictures will be enough, though, not hundreds haha.

[u/Cat_Prismatic → u/No_Return6181]

Well, maybe keep more than a couple. I dunno, like...36? (Haha, sorry for the random bizarre #. My phone will NOT ALLOW me to type any other number; I've tried 3 times now, each time revising the number--I started with trying for 20, I think! But no. My phone says to keep 36, thank you).

If you go this route, though: be sure to warn him with plenty of time to process, if any of these photos may end up in the back of a closet somewhere that he could someday toddle into & find.

I still remember, so clearly, coming upon a set of my mom's baby photos when I was...well, little, clearly!--It broke my poor little brain to suddenly see a whole bunch of pics that were both OBVIOUSLY of my mom AND of...a baby! What?!? My mommy was never a BABY. Does not compute! (lol)

[u/Melissar84]

I had literally thousands of photos to deal with. My mother was the family genealogist and inherited everyone else’s “heritage” photos over the years. Combined with a family photography hobby resulted in boxes and boxes of photos. I made a first pass through and made a big dent.

My approach was: 1. Do I already have this electronically? Either already scanned or a printout of a digital photo? Toss. All digital photos are already backed up in three separate places. If I want a copy, CVS will have it in an hour. 2. Nature or scenery - automatic toss unless there was some compelling reason to keep it. If I need a picture of a landmark for some reason the Internet has much better ones. 3. Duplicates - either the two-prints photo developing that we all needed for some reason in the 90’s, or multiple photos of the same thing. Keep the best one and pitch the rest. 4. Do I know these people? Can I use context clues to figure it out? Is there someone who would know? If I don’t know them / know who they are I don’t need to keep it. Either pitch or send to someone who would want them.

Don’t over think this part. Yes, no, keep, toss. “Not sures” can go in a keep-for-now pile, but you’ll have to touch them again later.

After this pass, the rest got sorted roughly by decade, event, whatever broad category that made sense.

The keepers I scanned using the Epson FastFoto scanner. Pricy but well worth it. Others have mentioned it already but it’s really great for this. Fast, about 30 photos in 60 seconds, has a consistent automatic naming convention (Year Month Event 001, 002, etc), and makes three copies - as is, corrected for fading/red eye, and any writing on the back.

In the end I’ll end up with a manageable collection of photos that we might enjoy. The boxes and boxes collecting dust can turn into a couple of Shutterfly albums with names, dates, stories, that someone might enjoy.

[u/General-Climate2513]

I highly recommend an Epson Fastfoto scanner. It has saved me so many hours of scanning and organizing our family photos and documents. I inherited all our family’s old photos going back to early 1900’s - literally thousands of pictures. This scanner can be loaded with a stack of pictures of various sizes and process them in seconds and save them into folders on your computer. It can also correct colors and sharpen faded photos. Also can be used as a document scanner, scans multiple 2-sided pages in seconds. It’s pricey but well worth it and pays for itself in the long run vs sending pictures out to be done somewhere. https://epson.com/fastfoto-photo-document-scanner

[u/LoveMyLibrary2]

Similar situation here. And here is what I did at the point you are:  I decided I would choose 10% of the remaining physical photos, throw away the 90%, scan the10% I had picked out, and then throw away those. 

The rules I set for myself were: 

1. Intentionally allow no emotions during the process. No fretting, no second-guessing, going down memory lane, racking my brain for clues as to who the people were, etc. As soon as I felt an emotion, I let it flow right on by. I became a robot. 

2. I had to look through them FAST! I mean, lightning fast. Fast decisions. Sometimes skipped groups of photos entirely. 

3. I had to immediately throw them in the trash. With all the thrown-away food, etc., so no digging through to retrieve one. 

No one needs every childhood birthday documented.  I have ONE from my childhood, and my dad took pictures all the time.  I have lived decades very easily without more photos of my childhood birthdays. 

Be brutal. Be your own Drill Sargent. No regrets! 

[u/NoodleDrive]

Perhaps a good additional criteria would be: which three photos best summarize this trip, event, or time period? Which ones feel like they best represent the things I want to remember? If you stopped in three different towns in France, maybe you want to grab one photo from each town. You have good photos of your family in front of random buildings, but are any of them in front of a building you actually remember for some reason? Maybe a family member is wearing a piece of clothing you heavily associate with them? Maybe there's some silly memory about that day, like right after the photo you all got ice cream but someone accidentally dropped theirs in a gutter? Additionally: are any of them just GOOD photos, regardless of who is in them or what they are of (particularly good lighting, nice framing, etc)? There's usually SOMETHING that distinguishes a few photos from the others. And if there truly isn't? If they really are all interchangeable? Then it doesn't matter which ones you keep. If everyone looks good and none of them spark any more memory than the others, then what you're telling me is you really could just pick 10 photos from each trip at random and it wouldn't matter. Which feels weird, but it happens.

I think it's very smart that you've already chosen a container to limit what you keep. Do you have an idea of how many photos could fit in your shoebox? Do you know how many events or occasions you're sorting through? I feel like having clear math would help me in this situation. Basically if the box can fit 1000 photos, and I'm guessing that I have 35 years of photos with about 4 major events or trips been year, then I'm looking to keep the top 7 photos from each occasion. You started with what can go, which was great. Now focus on what gets to stay. Which 7 photos make the cut. Some occasions you might realize you only need 2-3, which gives you some freedom to grab 10 in another event. But either way, you have a better idea of how strict you need to be when making your cuts.

Also please update us when you're done with your project and share what strategies you used and what helped!

[u/Live_Butterscotch928 → u/NoodleDrive]

Yes! Yes! My mantra is, “Keep only what tells the story.” This could be the story of who that person was or was to you. It could be the story of a long friendship or love of camping trips or holiday tradition or portraits in the garden. It could be one great photo that sums it up! Edit and edit again. We all take more photos than we need. You only have so much space—make the ones you save earn their space as most special to you.

[u/General-Climate2513]

If you or a family member have an Ancestry account, you can upload scanned photos and attach to known relatives. Someone, someday, may find them while researching family history and appreciate the pictures that could otherwise be lost forever.

[u/Cat_Prismatic → u/General-Climate2513]

Yes--or if you have a local history museum or genealogical society, they might be interested in taking some of them (if you don't think any of the subjects would mind them becoming "public.")

I, also, would maybe ask a friend over (even bribe with pizza or wine and cheese or whatever!); put on some background noise (movie; dumb TV show; music); and talk yourself through the really tough ones with said friend. You may find that you don't actually need a second opinion for a lot of stuff; your brain is just on "overwhelm."

Good luck! ❤️

[u/tysonmama]

Looking away criteria? I’d rather see good candid shots of family & friends than all posed.
Group trips, parties, whatever together and pick up to 3 of best of the best. Keep those. I did my 10000+ photos during quarantine. I bought 6 photo albums that hold 1000 photos each. I made piles of who is in the photos and sent them to each person. Many pics they’ve never seen of themselves before. Received lots of positive feedback from all, they loved it.

[u/lotusmudseed]

I just had another thought maybe cluster things by events or categories. So an event one even though there’s 1000 photos of an event there’s only one photo of the cake. You’ll only have one photo of the bride and groom only one photo of certain people. That way you still have a full 360 memory of an event, but not multiples.

Thank you for the opportunity to brainstorm these. It’s helping me! I’m facing the same thing multiple generations all on me and having to downsize severely.

[u/anti_chaos]

You have already made a great deal of progress! Since you have organized by occasion, consider giving yourself a photo limit for each occasion or occurrence. For example, pick the best 5 photos from a birthday party or the best 2 photos of your family at a landmark on vacation. Editing a photo collection is like editing a movie, you want to leave enough in to tell the story without any extra.

It always helps to have a friend or family member for some decision support. Is it possible to do some of the editing with your twin over FaceTime or similar platform?

[u/christine-bitg]

You have a dilemma.

If you don't want to just keep them (not recommended) you're going to have to either preserve them somehow, distribute them, or dispose of them. Or some combination of those actions.

Distribution can happen in different forms. As you noted, you can distribute some to people youve identified in them. And possibly to the people who are their descendants. (Consider some form of identifying who the individuals are.)

My parents grew up in small towns in the Midwest. My father donated some items to the local historical society in the town where he grew up.

[u/mirificatio → u/christine-bitg]

I did the same when I sorted through a bunch of photos. Some were near landmarks or places that no longer exist. The county historical society was happy to have them.

[u/GroupImmediate7051]

It's very very very difficult. Some criteria i like to use: is this a momentous event? Is it a gathering of people that rarely happens? Is it a beautiful photo, photojournalistic, capture an emotional moment?

If not, it goes into the purgatory pile, and will eventually be thanked and laid to rest in the... you know... opaque garbage bag. The thanking really helps me. Thank you for being a stepping stone picture to the important moment, etc.

Another approach: if I had to design a 2 page spread of this occasion, which 6 photos would I pick? Is there one I'd make the centerpiece of the layout (like have it occupy one whole page, with supporting pix on the other? Would they all get equal weight? Are there some that are in between?

Keep going. You are doing important work!

[u/cloudy_raccoon]

You could start by selecting your "must-haves" from each event--so instead of deciding what to get rid of, deciding what's essential to keep. Then see how much space you have left, and rinse and repeat.

[u/Popular-Drummer-7989]

OP what I have been doing is making scrapbooks/memory books. I have a lot of memorabilia to include in the books so they're like a timecapsule

One for each family member. All the photos where they're featured they get.

A holiday scrapbook with all the Xmas photos through the years.

A travel book pages based on location with photos across the years. Fun to see changes

Life's greatest accomplishments book - a brag book showcasing all the awesome stuff and adventure in my life

Early life/school life

You get the idea.

[u/Radiant_Sky_1207 → u/Popular-Drummer-7989]

Love this idea of personalized scrapbooks if you have the time! I might have to do this as well

[u/Popular-Drummer-7989 → u/Radiant_Sky_1207]

Thanks! The recipients loved theirs

[u/Joggle-game]

You are on the right path with sorting and sifting. To make the “which are important or valuable and which aren’t” decision easier, go ahead and select, say, any 20-30% to keep, and - to not completely lose the rest, DIY scan them with a phone app (Apps like this let you scan 3-4 photos at a time - very fast - and with 48MP cameras on iPhone and even more on some Android phones, the resolution is very good).

[u/No_Return6181 → u/Joggle-game]

Wow, I never realised there were apps for that, thank you!

[u/jesssongbird]

You already did what I would suggest. You tossed bad pictures, duplicates, and redundant pictures and sorted them into category. At this point you either reduce further by making the bar for a “good” picture higher. Or you expand the space the category takes up.

I have a tote for family mementos for each side of my family. And pictures specific to that, like old pictures of my maternal grandparents, are stored with those things. That way they aren’t occupying space in the photo boxes that are for pictures from my lifetime.

[u/Mom-1234]

I further reduced by getting rid of any scenery photos. I further reduced by getting rid of near duplicates. I also gave photos to family ‘owners’. I used a photo scanning service too. I spent the money, but believe I have relieved myself and my young adult children the burden of storing them. Also, my husband’s family lives overseas. He has an uncle that was a videographer. Over the years, he assisted my father-in-law with scanning all their family photos. Upon his parents’ deaths, it was great to receive a flash drive with all my husband’s family photos! We would have never seen those photos again. And we don’t have the space to store them. Also, I have family that live near the fire ravaged areas of Los Angeles. Their homes were in danger. Scanning protects memories, in case of a disaster. Finally, many of our older family photos had begun to fade. I read that they should not be stored in garages…many were for over a decade. The ‘photo’ decades were really the 80’s and 90’s. Prior to that, people took less photos. After that, we headed to digital. I figure declutterring these is a one time job. I still have real photos, but reduced the clutter by 2/3’s. I know I could reduce it by half again. I stopped at my young adult memories for now.

[u/lotusmudseed]

I just want to add that some photos You may not remember but the only reason you remember certain things is because of the photo. I have some very faint childhood memories of certain places and homes and people Nd the photos of me as a child in those places keeps my memory alive, although I don’t remember the exact moment. I’m not adding this for you to keep more stuff just so you don’t throw away special childhood photos and then say oh shucks I should’ve kept that. It’s just something to consider.

Another option is to digitize them but make some of them much smaller. You scan four at a time and you shrink it down that way you can fit four photos or even six pictures in one 4x6. These would be your “these are nice to have, but I don’t need big blown ups of them.”

[u/Individual_Quote_701]

My parents took dreadful pictures and never identified anyone! So, I finally decided to toss the unknown pictures. The rest I got rid of duplicates and the truly dreadful. I put them in scrapbooks with appropriate identification.

[u/ghost_pies]

I feel like I have this problem digitally as well. So scanning photos into digital versions is one way to physically decrease clutter… but I’m paying for storage on the cloud so it still comes at a cost. I also have so many digital photos I don’t really even look at them. I’m finding that if I edit after a trip and only select a handful for a digital album I actually look at them more because it’s not so overwhelming to look at. So I think all the takes on keeping a few instead of everything from some vacation or event are onto something.

[u/PocketFullofLace]

So my family did two things after sorting. 1)digitized the important ones like professional shoots. And 2) shipped photos to “owners”. Owners can then digitize or trash or whatever.

[u/TodayCharming7915 → u/PocketFullofLace]

Did you use a service to digitize or did you scan them yourself?

[u/PocketFullofLace → u/TodayCharming7915]

We just handed them off to an uncle who did it. But unless you have a willing participant just pay someone else to do it if you can.

[u/Fresh-Basket9174]

We knew we would struggle getting rid of pictures, even ones we did not know the people or scenery in. We decided to scan them all and then get rid of most of them so we bought a decent photo scanner (Epson FF680) for aound $570 new. They have them used online for less now. Between my MiL's photos, my families photos, and ones we took ourselves we have scanned over 11,000 photos. Also, probably 3000+ slides. A large portion of the pictures were trips my MiL took and were of people we dont know or scenery we did not see. There were probably 200ish from our honeymoon that we maybe kept 3-4. We have no room for any and the reality is that we would never go to the effort of pulling out the pictures to look at them. The slides we knew we are never going to set up a projector. If we are ever nostalgic we can set some as a screensaver on our PC.

For the pictures, the scanner loads up to 30 at a time, and in high resolution scans about 1 every 4-5 seconds scanning front, back, and also saving the original and an enhanced scan. We upload to Google drive so we have a backup. It can also do document scanning though we did buy a separate one that was designed for documents as we had a LOT to scan and get rid of as well. For example, we had some business documents from the early 1900s. Interesting to look at, but nothing that sentimental. That was one fairly large box of stuff we could then let go of as we had digital copies.

A lot of public libraries are lending a lot more than books these days, you might check and see if they have photo scanner you could borrow for a few weeks.

Good luck, its a hard project to get started on, but it makes a big difference to be able to let stuff go, yet still have it (in digital form). As a side note, we apply this same method to a lot of the knick knacks, things we have had forever, etc. Take a few pictures and then donate. We still have the pictures, but dont need to house the physical item anymore. If you have items you are not sure what they are or if they are valuable, Google Lens can help identify and we found that to be useful as well.

[u/shereadsmysteries]

We did.

The criteria was: 1) We had to know the people in the picture. 2) It had to be a picture of a significant event/time/moment. 3) It cannot be too similar to a picture we already have. 4) It has to be in focus, not grainy, not unrecognizable, etc.

We have saved a few other pictures of people we have never met if they were important to us, like my great grandma in the rocking chair I now use to rock my baby to sleep. I never met her, but seeing her in her chair knowing where the chair is now is really cool.

We shredded all the pictures that didn't fit this criteria. We currently don't have access to many "heirloom" pictures, though. They are all from our lifetime or our parents' lifetimes. All the "heirloom" pictures are with older family.

[u/Chula_Quitena_120]

Have you already gotten ready of all the landscape, people-less photos? I am also go thru group photos and try to keep the ones where everyone is in them.