Thanks to this digital age, many of us have cell phones full of photos. Not to mention the boxes of prints we accumulated over the years before digital became an option. So many memories, and if we’re not careful, they’ll slip away during our lifetime and after we’re gone. I’ve been wrestling with this lately, how to document our family memories. So in this post, I’m sharing some practical ways to preserve family memories—for this generation and the next.
I have dozens of photo albums in boxes in the basement and almost 25,000 photos on my cell phone. I also have papers and memorabilia shoved into random files and plastic containers. So much accumulated over decades of life. Does this sound familiar to you? Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I figure I have more than 20 million words locked in my phone and sitting in boxes. Thousands upon thousands of stories socked away in a musty box and on the clouds of the internet. Hundreds of stories that are tucked into the cobwebs of my mind and the older I get, the more cob-webby they become.
This is frustrating to me because I want to get them all organized and put into some format that my family and I can enjoy – whether it’s digital albums, physical photos, or framed ones (like on my work-in-progress gallery wall). So, this mission to preserve family memories began.
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Why preserve family memories?
First of all, my kids – and especially my kids’ kids – will not have room to store all these albums and digital pics. Most importantly, I do not want to burden them with the overwhelming task of going through all of this when we are gone. That is my job and my gift to future generations.
I also want to enjoy the pictures and the memorabilia now, but I don’t. I rarely flip through all the photos on my phone or go into the basement and pull out big photo albums or scrapbooks. Sometimes I think about them, but then I think, “It’s too hard.” When I have family or friend reunions, I don’t pack up all the albums to haul on the airplane so we can reminisce. Too much work.
Finally, because I want to remember the people in my life. I want to remember the stories – and stories always revolve around people. I want to give thanks for them. Learn from them. Share them with loved ones. And if I’m perfectly honest, I want my children’s children and their children and their children – and for generations to come – to know I lived and loved. So the pictures I take and collect today matter.
So here’s my plan, and maybe this plan will give you some ideas for your own memories.
Practical Ways to Preserve Family Memories
I’m approaching my memories in two main categories: pictures you can touch and share and digital photos. Each category requires its own unique strategy for preservation.
Step-by-Step: How to Preserve Pictures You Can Touch and Share
First, let’s tackle the boxes and albums of printed and film photography. Note: If you’re an avid scrapbooker, then you might ignore all of this. You’ve probably already created some beautiful books for generations to come. Maybe they are even archival quality. Way to go! I had great plans to do that. Alas, I didn’t. So instead, I’ll take this slightly less creative approach:
#1. Gather your supplies.
You’ll need some photo boxes and archival index cards and envelopes.
- Find photo boxes. These museum-quality storage boxes are great because they are archival. Here’s another archival choice from the Container Store. Be prepared, you will pay to preserve these for future generations. These keepsake boxes will work but only for the short-term.
- Find archival index cards like these or envelopes like these. Here’s the Container Store envelopes.
#2. Gather all your photos.
Pull out your old family photo albums, the shoeboxes stuffed with Walgreens photo envelopes, and scrapbooks you never finished.
#3. Take the photos out of those plastic sleeves.
Yes, those were nice for a while, but like me, maybe you’ve realized you aren’t looking at them. Especially those sticky photo albums that were popular back when Nixon was president. Do it carefully and soon. The longer you wait, the more likely the photographs will be ruined.
#4. Curate.
You can curate as you go or wait until you have them all scattered on a big table, but this is the most important step. Your great-grandchildren do not need to have 62 pics of your trip to Rome. Here’s a little guide to help you decide what to keep and what to toss:
- Discard duplicates.
- Toss blurry pics.
- Throw out pics of scenes without people. Seriously. Unless you are a professional photographer, these aren’t meaningful.
- Keep the best of the best.
#5. Decide if you want to frame your favorites.
If so, set those aside for another project. You might even consider gifting some photos to your family. A framed memory makes the perfect heirloom gift to give to a sibling or your kids.
#7. Sort them into groups that make sense.
Years are easy. 1988 photos. 1990 photos. Perhaps it’s a trip. Grand Canyon. Maybe you have a group of pics of your kid playing soccer for ten years.
#6. Label where necessary.
This is tricky. Everything I’ve researched says do not write on the back with any pen or marker. Instead, you should use a pencil. Or, if you want to get serious, you can use an index system where you label the pictures with a number and add names, location, dates, comments to the archival card.
#8. Organize your newly curated, labeled photos.
Store each category of photos in an archival envelope or use archival index cards to separate each category. Here’s an archival kit that holds 1200 photos.
#9. Store your photo boxes somewhere accessible.
Place your newly curated, organized collection into your archival storage boxes and keep them on a bookshelf where you can easily access them anytime you want a trip down memory lane.
#10. Finally, consider scanning some photos and creating photo books.
I love this idea because I have two children. Wouldn’t it be nice to give them each a book filled with their memories and photos? (See #4 below for more about this.) I’ve heard this scanner is the best as it scans one photo per second. But the price is high, very high. I need to wait for a big sale before jumping on this one or perhaps sharing the purchase with family members.
The beauty of boxing up photos from these big and bulky photo albums is that you now have one or two smaller containers that can sit on your bookshelf or coffee table. It’s easy to take these photo boxes to the next family reunion. Or just to pull out one of the envelopes and flip through them.
Step-by-Step: How to Organize Your Digital Photos
I love digital photos. Pictures are on this small handheld device, easy to flip through and find that cute pic of my family or the screenshot of the pair of shoes I might like to purchase. It’s easy to think that these will last forever. True, they won’t degrade like physical photos, but access to the digital pictures may change. Your computer or hard drive may fail. The technology to secure the photos in the cloud may change.
So what’s the best way to curate and preserve family memories in digital photos?
#1. Clear out the clutter.
If you are like me, you have hundreds of random photos that were for the moment only. I might take a picture of a cute sweater at Costco and text it to my daughter, for example. Or my Wordle games as I compete with my siblings. I do not need these to hang around forever. Also, just because I can take fifteen shots to get the best one doesn’t mean I need to keep those fifteen shots. I’m going to make it a daily practice to get rid of those, and a weekly practice to sort and organize my digital pics into albums. This makes it easier to find what you want.
#2. Back up your digital photos to a hard drive and/or a cloud service.
This is a little tech-y for me and hard to explain since we all use different devices. I recommend searching “how to back up photos” and follow the steps you find about your device—from sources more tech-savvy than me. Here’s one helpful article, “Organizing Your Digital Photos,” written by Christian photographer-turned-podcaster, Nancy Ray.
#3. Print a few you want to hold and/or display.
Here are a few options for printing your digital photos:
- Use your own printer and photo paper. These probably won’t be archival, though, unless you spend a lot of money.
- Upload and send to your local drugstore for cheap and fast copies. Also not archival quality.
- Use a professional online service like MPix where high-quality archival prints start at 36 cents each.
#4. Create a photo book.
Finally, consider creating photo books from your digital and scanned printed photos. Thanks to a niece who scanned and organized boxes of photos and memorabilia from my parents, I have several photo books with pictures from as far back as the 1940s including wedding pictures, newspaper clippings, service records, photos of antiques, and much more. This took hours of scanning, but it allowed each of our families to have these precious memories.
There are so many options out there. Everything from the budget-friendly Shutterfly to more expensive products like Artifact Uprising and Printique. I know that some are easier to use than others, but I can’t give you recommendations just yet. I’m planning to try several and then perhaps share with you.
Extra Step: Words to go along with photos
Your curated photos are beautiful by themselves, but I’m challenging myself (and you) to go one step further and write something about some of the pictures. As you are curating your collection, take some time to remember the story behind the picture. Then write your thoughts to include with your pictures. If this sounds overwhelming, let me offer a few suggestions.
- Choose one photo that sparks a memory of a particular moment.
- Let the memory of the moment that picture was taken come to you. Sit with it for a while. Even a day or two. Post the photo on your fridge. Ask whoever is in the photo with you about that time. Bring it back to life
- Freewrite for five minutes on a scrap piece of paper. Just write down whatever comes to your mind, no self-editing at all.
- Then write one paragraph on an archival piece of paper in your own handwriting. That by itself is a gift for generations to come.
- Tuck it into the envelope or section in your photo box. If you are creating a photo book, add the words there.
Here’s an example. See the picture of me with the Paula Deen lifesize cutout? I remember why I wanted to go there. I remember the lunch we had. But anyone else looking at the photo – my kids or grandkids – would not. So if I write a short memory, nothing fancy, the picture comes alive with my personality:
“Bruce and I took a trip to Savannah, Georgia and when I think about Savannah, two things come to my mind. The novel, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and Paula Deen’s cooking show. When my kids were late elementary and middle school, I enjoyed having cooking shows playing on the kitchen television while I prepped dinner. Paula was one of the favorites because she cooked the way my husband likes to eat. Lots of butter, cheese, grits, fried things, and a little more cheese. I just had to eat at her signature restaurant. And yes, it was all the southern things I imagined. We couldn’t eat it all. And we didn’t need to eat like that again. Fun! I am blessed to have a good man, good food, and the health to travel. Thanks be to God.”
A Final Reason to Preserve Family Memories
You may know the story of Joshua leading the Israelites across the Jordan River into the Promised Land. This is told in the Book of Joshua. The Lord instructed Joshua to have the men take twelve stones, one for each tribe, and lay them in the new land. These were to be stones of remembrance.
“When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ 22 then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’ 23 For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, 24 so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.”
Joshua 4: 22-24 ESV
We are not Joshua, and we haven’t crossed a river on dry ground, but we have our story to tell to future generations. And if you trust in Christ as your Savior, then you really have a story to tell to future generations and a reason to preserve family memories. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as my example above when you acknowledge your faith and thankfulness.
So your children will know.
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