Store and Protect Large Photos Solution
June 15, 2021
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I've shared my goal to better organize our (thousands) of photos and school
moments and projects a few times over the years. It's one of my biggest
organizational thorns in my side! I've
never found a great way to store photos, especially in a way that we can really enjoy them.
I'm sure many of you are asking why I haven't just used photo albums, and I
do plan to add them to albums eventually. I haven't done that yet because we
had WAY too many photos to even begin adding them to albums. And so
many of them are too big to fit into the albums we have.
You can see how many boxes of photos I had when I shared our organized linen
closet a few years ago:
You can see how that
started as my "Monica closet" here. :) That didn't include the larger boxes full of bigger photos as
well.
I'm so thankful to have all of these pictures! Most of them are from my
childhood and older family photos. Unfortunately I have very little as far
as mementos from my youth so these photos are a real treasure!
Earlier last year when the world slowed down, I vowed to take the time to
sort through ALL of the photos. I spent many nights going through
each box, sorting and decluttering. We had SO many double photos (you
youngins won't even know what I'm talking about!). Remember when you could
get two of each photo developed?
I tossed ALL of the doubles and also tossed photos of people I didn't know.
I'm not talking about long lost family members, but childhood friends I
don't remember, or photos my parents took of people I don't remember at all.
(My mother passed away last year and my Dad didn't want them.)
I decluttered our photos before a few years ago, but it's definitely easier to let go of more as I get older. 😁
I sorted what I had left into decades and organized them in the photo boxes
that way. I cut the boxes down from eight to four!
I still had the issue of organizing a TON of large photos -- sized 5x7 and
up. I threw all of them into larger boxes like this one so they were all in
one spot:
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It's bugged me that these have been piled up in here instead of organized so
we can enjoy them. A few weeks ago I came across the answer to my problems!
I'm not sure if I can adequately describe my love for these simple art
portfolios. They are the answer to so many of my paper
organization woes! They come in a bunch of different sizes:
When I got them I knew they would work really well to organize paper items
as well. School papers, cards, mementos -- anything paper! I have books in
the following sizes:
- 11x17 for large photos and art (they also carry this 11x14 size)
- 9x12
- 8x10 for larger photos and paper
- 5x7
- they also have a 4x6 size (two per order)
Each one has 24 pages, room for nearly 50 photos or sheets in each album.
So far I am thrilled with these portfolios! They are super simple
and clean atheistically -- easy to wipe off and plenty sturdy:
But they also give enough that you can fit a TON inside and they still close
nicely. They have held the bulkier kindergarten art projects beautifully.
There is a small spine that you could label as well.
I am so very happy with these books. I started with the 8x10 size for
my parent's old photos and pics of my grandparents:
Aren't they a beautiful couple?
**As I was filling these albums, I realized how sad it would be to have them
closed away in these forever. I'm determined to create a wall display
somewhere in our house. There's truly nothing like these vintage photographs
and I'm looking forward to showing a few off!
I'll update you when I figure out where and how I'm going to do that.
:)
It really is such a relief to have them nicely stored away where they will
be protected. AND we can turn the pages like a book and enjoy looking
through them now. It's a huge upgrade from having them piled in a box!
Speaking of boxes...I shared years ago how I had been storing our son's
school art and papers in these large boxes:
It actually worked GREAT while he was young (after elementary I didn't keep
nearly as much) because I would start a new box every school year. I had it
out in our kitchen and would throw in papers I wanted to keep as he brought
them home.
But years later...I've realized that yet again, they are just sitting there
piled up. We never, ever look at them! I wanted to be able to look through
them like our photos, so I've been using the larger sized portfolios for his
artwork:
Something else occurred to me as I've been sorting through these papers...I've
kept them for ME most of all. I do want our son to have some of these pieces
of his childhood, but I don't have any expectations that he'll be dying to
take them one day when he moves out. ;)
I think when he gets married and has children, he may want them. But for now,
this is for me! And that's OK. With that in mind, I've started getting harder
on myself to only keep the really cute stuff. I realized after filling
one 9x12 book with papers from just kindergarten that perhaps I should let go
of just a BIT more. Ha!
These portfolios are such a simple thing, but are a solution I was desperately
searching for! I love that the photos and paper are nicely organized and
protected, but we can easily access them and enjoy those memories.
I'm not done yet -- it will probably take me a couple weeks to get through
everything and organize it how I want. But it will be SO worth it!!
Then...I'll just need to get the thousands of photos off my phone so we can
enjoy those!
**By the way, I'll be sharing these and some of my other organization
favorites on Amazon Live tonight (Tuesday)! Come watch at 8 p.m. EST and say
hello. :) You can
see the live here.
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Where do you buy the art portfolios?
ReplyDeleteI found them on Amazon -- I link to all of them in the middle of this post. :)
DeleteNice! but I hope you also scanned them. I have books of photos that get pulled out maybe every other year. I watch my scanned photos all the time. They are in folders on my iPad and backed up to iCloud. I can access them from everywhere, search for people and places, and easily share with family.
ReplyDeleteGood idea! I haven't yet, but maybe someday!
DeletePhotomyne is great for that so far. I've only been using it for a week, but I was able to scan all my my grandma's family photos dating back to the 1800s.
DeleteI love this idea!
ReplyDeleteI've been using the large ones for my kids art for years. It works great. I think I have the 18x24 size and I store them under the couch.
ReplyDelete