Handsome Husband was a news reporter for one year after college. He fancied himself a photographer as well. He takes a lot of pictures. If one picture of a child engaged in some worthy activity is good, then 50 taken that day will be better. And in the days of film, he always ordered duplicates of the whole rolls. Too much trouble to pick out the good pics and go back for duplicates to send out to friends and relatives.
This cabinet (it's very deep) contains only a few years worth of photos. Perhaps you can tell that they are in no order. Many times over the years, people have gone through them to look for something, pulled everything out of envelopes, and left big piles of unrelated photos swirling around in the cabinet. I have made previous attempts to do something with this mess, but I have been hampered by
1. HH's absolute refusal to allow any photo, no matter how bad, to be thrown away;
2. My own inability to identify the subjects of many photos, thus, I can't really organize them and don't want them in a book;
3. My own laziness;
4. Every school project, funeral, etc., which requires going through the photos, leaves me with a big pile of unidentified pictures spanning an entire generation.
5. No one else seems to care.
6. The door of the cabinet will still close.
In previous attempts, I have labeled the envelopes with a year and some general description. I have also labeled the boxes by year. None of this helps.
I should mention that the friends and relatives, who were happy to receive pics over the years, have begun to clean up their own lives. Some of these people have decided to send the pictures back to us rather than throw them away. (!!??!!) I know they mean well. But do not allow this strategy to take hold in your family.
And what do you do with the negatives?
Before you decide that the age of digital photos is better, you should see my computer files. Same problem. And HH will not even allow the photos to be deleted from the SD cards after they are put on the computer. So we have a collection of memory cards as well.
Now you see why I call it a nightmare.
1 comment:
In cleaning out my own closet in the same house, I found several hundred similar photos, most of which I threw away. I have no memory of who took these photos or why they were in my closet. No one needs 47 blurry photos (i.e. almost unidentifiable) of my estranged friend from middle school on a Ski Doo.
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