What do you do with old family photos?

[Nugg]

I mean, literally two trunks full of my grandparents photos my parents photos my own family photos

I intend to gradually go through them and get rid of the thousands of photos of zoo animals and the like🤦🏼‍♀️🫠

I have always been a sentimental holder, however as the last couple of years I’ve become a lot more pragmatic mostly due to having had to clear out to separate parental homes following their deaths😢

But I have ended up with every single family photo that we found and I’m struggling to know what to do.

Obviously, I want to keep some of them and I will ask my aunt and Uncle from each side if they want any of their parents photos but I strongly assume they will already have some.

It just feels so wrong to dispose of them, but my own children probably won’t feel the same and they will end up just being disposed of at some point anyway!

i’m having a real moral dilemma over this! Probably because I love looking at old photos And the incredible memories they hold not only for me, but the amount I’ve ended up with is just unbelievable and I literally have nowhere to put them. They are currently in storage unit that I am trying to empty to save money on paying for it.

I bought a digital photo frame. I have hundreds of photos in albums going back to the childhood. I often take pictures of my favourites with my phone and upload them to the digital frame. The quality seems fine with even the black and white photos I have inherited. I find it helps with renewing memories too, as my memory isn't great.

Thanks re scanners. I have tried taking photos of photos with my phone but it's tricky avoiding glare when the originals are on gloss paper. I use the scanning function regularly for paper docs but haven't tried that for photos, but imagine the glare problem will be the same. However our printer has a flatbed scanning function (which I've never used) so could try that. It's the quantity though, suitcases full of them, so a big sorting job.

In time possibly grandchildren or greatgrandchildren will long to have seen them. I do understand it's a problem! Is there a local museum that might take stuff? I have some of my great grandpa's accounts. He died before I was born. I touch the pages and think of his hands writing on the pages when they were new. Mucky thumbprints in the corners - DNA match! 1880s is interesting from the real pictures of what people were wearing then - not a TV serial or film or the sketches of the time.

I have some photos that no-one is going to relate to when I am gone. I hate to think of someone just ditching them. I am thinking I might take photocopies and go to a place near to where they were taken - general area, not specific, and bury them in the earth. That way I do not physically burn them or shred them with my own hands.

The advantage of a proper photo scanner is that you can scan a batch of photos at the same time. It definitely saves time.

i also second looking at local museums or historical societies. I have one in my hometown and they have regular exhibitions of various topics and always look for people with pictures.
Especially if you have photos of buildings, roads or events.

I'm interested in the answers as my sister and I have loads, a few dating back to the turn of the previous century including army ones of my great grandfather from WW1, and we don't have any children to pass them onto, nor other younger family members as my dad was an only child and we're not in touch with anyone in my mum's family. I guess they will end up being destroyed when both of us are gone.

I scanned a lot of my photo prints using an ordinary 3 in 1 printer/scanner. Later I discovered the Photomyne app, which can scan multiple prints, separate them & rotate where necessary. I only kept a few of the best as prints, the rest are stored on my iPad & in iCloud, from where I can print them if I want to.

I recently cleaned out my own storage and realised that at least 4 generations of photos had come down to me (there is no one else in my family left), often copies, as I think this is what family members did - had copies made and distributed. I ended up using a photo scanner app on my phone, chucked all the actual photos. Organised them digitally, but also got rid of those I could not identify. I saved some that were interesting, even if I wasn't sure who. It was kinda hard, and I felt guilty for getting rid of them. But honestly, there is no one who would want them.

I too became holder of the family archive… thousands upon thousands of photos and slides.
I kept very old albums (1880-1940 ish) - not sure why really.
I looked at ALL the other photos and only kept any that I knew who the people were - lakes and mountain etc views were binned.
I bought a slide viewer and have looked at all my parents’ slides - kept a select few, but haven’t yet attacked my grandparents’ slides - grandad had a dark room and made his own.
So I still have the joy of endless coach trips around Europe in the 1950s and 60s to look forward to.

Op fabulous thread thank you . I think this will be my big summer project ! I've got boxes also

I’m doing exactly the same.

I had this exact same problem, I sorted through them and threw out all the “scenery” ones, put the remaining ones in a box and gave then to my nieces, I think they went through them, picking out the photos they wanted to keep

after you have collated, sell them there is a market on eBay

If people buy them from e-bay, what are they buying them for?

Definitely got rid of all the scenery. God help the people who have to curate all the selfies people take nowadays

At least the selfies usually haven’t been printed out.

I’ve been sorting out a large collection of photos that belonged to an aunt. Like others I’ve got rid of the holiday view snaps - there is a limit to how many blurred photos of the Eiffel Tower a family needs, let alone pictures of nondescript countryside no-one can identify. Then I’ve been brutal on what appear to be people none of us know eg a group on a skiing holiday in the 70’s - probably the ski class she was in.

ive been left with those which are of family and I’m weeding those down as well - there are endless neatly identical snaps from the early 1930’s of toddlers in the garden (aunts and cousins) which came from my grandmother. I’m keeping some - and no one else in the family is interested.

However my mother has created a sort of family tree photo album going back to the 1890’s, with photos and labels explaining who people are and where they fit in, which will be for her only grandchild - he’s under 10 but does ask questions about family. She’s sorting out the best photos for this and is then reducing the numbers kept - or at least putting the rest in a box with the idea that it can go at some point, knowing we’ve got this album with the best. For each person she’s done a collection of pictures throughout their life, not just one picture. I think she hopes it’s relatively easy to keep for the future and not just be thrown away which might happen to a large collection of random photos.

Journaling of various sorts, collage, art prompts, local history. People also just collect stuff. You have to sell in bundles, not individually

I’m scanning all my parents’ old photos myself using the PhotoScan app, downloaded onto my phone.
I then intend sharing them with my sisters.
It’s easy to use; I can’t think that a scanner would be any better.

This makes me sad. Somewhere down the line there will be someone who, like me, is so grateful to the great-grandmother they never met, for hoarding and cataloging all the pictures and provenance of heirlooms.
I aim to make it all the history fit in one trunk and hopefully it will continue to be passed down for a few more generations.

I love my family history and want to keep all the photos but there is a limit to what I can actually store. This isn’t 5-10 photo albums it’s more like 10-20 document boxes worth. They are taking over my spare room and long term they will end up being thrown away.

Digitising them will take me ages but will preserve the photos whilst taking up much less space.

I think you’re lucky, I’ve too many digital photos of my kids and all the physical ones from when I was young are in my mums house. I love going through physical albums!!
edited to add I find digital storage annoying as you just never look at them again- the small amount of ones we have in physical albums we all pick up and flick through every so often

Write details on back of actual photo with pencil.
Store in cool place, mouse proof.
Also scan any nice ones (and their backs) and share with many and anyone who wants them.

Then the photos are never lost.

There will be no grandchildren_ great grandchildren in our family to pass on to! Dd has all the photos of herself as a child in 2 boxes but isn't at all interested in photos of her grandparents who died before she was born.

My PIL started scanning theirs when they retired and I think it took one winter to go through all of them. They included descriptions of years, name of the person and where it was taken.

Then they made one set for DH, people he knows, is related to or from holidays they went on together.

@Morepositivemum We have a digital photoframe and I love seeing them up. We will now add my family photos to them as well. We also use the laptop screensaver, both our private and DH's work one, as a photo library.

The only physical photo album we have is our wedding album and a scrap/photo one from my last year at 6th form with photos and memories from a school trip, prom, school events.

I didn't know you could do this. How lovely.

You could donate some of them to local history museums