What would you do with photographs?

[AInightingale]

Clearing my mum's house (she's in assisted living) out slowly, and now I've reached the really personal stuff- albums of photos and mountains of old stray ones in envelopes, some dating back to the early 20th century.

Obviously I will keep their wedding album and baby/grandchild photos, but what about the rest? My parents took loads of holidays and there are MILLIONS of pictures of camels, cruise ships, exotic places etc. Also tonnes of pictures of my dad with his mates messing about in boats and stuff like that.

While I want to keep mementos of my parents' lives, I also want to seriously downsize this hoard. WWYD with it all? Thinking of scanning the historical ones to create a digital record, and frankly dumping a lot of the holiday stuff. Does that seem too harsh? I want to give my mother one or two albums but that's all. Are there any apps where you can make family trees etc, has anyone been in this position?

If your mum still has mental capacity and your relationship with her is good, I would take out all of the photos that contain people and things that look like funny memories and I would take them to her and talk about them and see how attached to them she is. I would ask her to select the ones she wanted to keep and scan the rest into the computer.
It depends also how much you and your mum value photos though too.
If she won’t know who is in the photos though, I would do exactly what you planned to do.

Thanks but she is a lifelong hoarder though - that's why we've got so many! Today I found her birth certificate and marriage cert stuck in a folder with photos, old junk mail, my old school reports, seed catalogues and knitting patterns - it's that kind of chaos. The thing I am trying to avoid is stray photos - I want everything fixed in an album or digitised.

I am following this with interest as I will have to do this at some point.

I love photos and can spend hours looking at them (when I should be doing something else) but having cleared out my Aunt's property when she passed away you realise that many of the photos mean nothing to you, which sounds harsh.

Random camels and landscapes could be anywhere. People in photos are different but at my parents house many of the photos don't have anything written on the back and no one recognises the people. I'm loathe to spend time scanning and storing photos that no one living recognises because I just can't see the point. If only I have access to a digital folder it's not like someone random is suddenly going to spot Great Uncle Fester.

I'm sorry I don't know what the answer is 🙈

My aunt was a hoarder. She was also a great traveller and photo-taker, she often got two sets of prints from a film so she could give some away and keep a complete set.

In consequence, when she went into care and I emptied her house I had to dispose of literally thousands of photos. I kept her favourites - mostly family and friends. I'm afraid the rest had to go to the tip.

I felt terrible doing it but there was no other way. I feel your pain!

My DS is scanning loads of my dad's old negatives for me at the moment and I hope to go through them with him to add names to faces. Dad has just gone into a care home so it's a bit of a challenge and I expect it will be a slow job.

My grandma's second husband threw away all of her photos when she died rather than passing on them on to us. My mum is so sad that she wasn't able to save them.

I have recently had to do this.

Ruthlessness is fairly important.

I threw out anything that didn’t contain people, and of those that remained, I chucked all the out of focus/backs of heads ones/repeated ones. That left a relatively manageable amount which I have disposed of after I scanned them.

My parents also had SO many framed photos of grandchildren/graduates/weddings. They ALL went to the dump.

I think there was a thread awhile ago about local history sites linking to online family photo albums. Have a search for that. There are also lots of online family photo album systems you can use if you want.

Yes we've got tonnes of framed pictures too. Only so many you can get on the wall before the plaster disintegrates under the strain. Might take the frames to the charity shop and get the important ones in albums.

Before my dad went into care, I probably would have said that you can’t dispose of her belongings, but then we were tasked with clearing out his house. An entire house with 70+ years of contents and possessions. It seems harsh but there’s literally nothing else you can do with a lot of stuff but dispose of it. It’s simply not possible to store it.
We told him it had to be done and he understood.
I thought of it this way, most photo albums were in boxes and hadn’t been opened since the 1980s anyway, and probably wouldn’t have ever again been

Like you said, keep what’s important and maybe make one album for her with eg one holiday photo, one Christmas photo etc.

Do you have siblings?obviously always double check with them about who wants what (with mum’s permission).

I helped MIL sort through tonnes of her photos to select her favourite and organised them in a photo storage box like this
https://amzn.eu/d/dqhXCg9

Very simple categories like family photos before she was born, childhood photos, photos from her teenage years, uni etc. If your Mum still can look through photos, this might be a nice way to keep them without having to bother with photo albums.

Honestly, I would bin all or almost all and not scan.

If you are going to keep and scan some, have a rule like PP - any without people in and any that are blurred go straight in the bin.

If you scan a lot, are you ever likely to look at them? It doesn’t solve the problem, just makes it a digital not a physical storage issue.

When I was clearing my (dead) parents’ house, someone said to me, ‘these are their memories, not yours’.

I think that’s a helpful thing to bear in mind if you’re the sentimental type. I also think, if it’s going to go in the loft - there’s simply no point in keeping it.

My dad died last year and I’m making an album of photos that I like - taking various ones from throughout his life to make into a big album. I’ll do the same for my mum when she dies (they are separated). Any leftover photos that have people I know in them I’m passing onto them, and anything else I’m sadly throwing away. My dad was an organised hoarder. He had a big house and lots of outbuildings so it’s been a major clear out. I’ve been quite tough. Kept things I really liked, but drawn the line at everything else. He was a computer engineer, and had several half finished computers in the house, all different operating systems. That was his hobby, his interest, and while it felt bad throwing them away, they’ll never mean anything to me. I care for my mum and am trying to get her to sort things she doesn’t want now. I don’t want to have to go through this again!

Keep the ones with people in that you think you might be able to ID, or places that might have some sentimental meaning to you and only you. Honestly you need to be brutal bin all the random landscapes and camels, they mean nothing to you and that isn't your fault.
I did this with a load of childhood photos recently, lots of stuff I'd taken and they mean next to nothing now so they went in the bin.

Thanks @MoltenLasagne but my mum, if left with a box like this, would have them all out and randomly pinned up round the place, stuck into mirrors, dotted along the furniture (which I'm meant to dust) etc, or shoved into envelopes and forgotten about! I have about an hour a week, if even that, to clean her flat....she is lethal with anything loose, I am actually thinking of gorilla glue for the albums.

I'd immediately bin camels etc. and then get them all into a smaller manageable pile and then ask mum who the people were and write on the back. Organise it, and bin the rest.

I have had about 20 albums cluttering up my home since I emptied my parents house in June. So far I can't bring myself to start going through them as still doing death admin. But my plan is to condense them to 2-3 albums that are meaningful photos to me. Give some to relatives if they are in the photo etc.

But yes I can see myself throwing away many images of them on holiday in Spain in the 90s!

There are sites like ancestry for family tree where you can upload pictures etc. I've got a similar job with my grandparents albums. I'm organising loose pictures into scrapbooks/ albums. Then scanning a selection to create photo books for family members.

Digitised pictures are actually pointless as no-one will leaf through them.

Pick the best ones and make a handful of albums out of those. The very best/most sentimental ones could maybe be blown up and framed to hang on your wall. Ditch the rest.

Ah yes, I can imagine that would make things harder then. Maybe if you find a selection of photos you could scan them and buy her a digital photo frame? That way she gets a lot of photos but they are properly contained.

I have the same job to do. I agree that its pointless keeping any pictures of people your siblings don't recognise. If they mean nothing to you then you bet your life they won't be valued by your kids. Why add to your kids burden when it's their turn? I feel guilty but that's the harsh reality

My mum had loads of albums and we/me had to deal with it when she died. I kept all the people ones, and anything I recognised like my grandparents houses, and binned all her holiday and road trip ones, or recent people I didn't know like pilate friends (kept the old sepia ones of people I didn't know, someone might do a family tree at some point). As pp said, they were her memories not mine. I then scanned them all, put onto USB sticks and gave copies to my three brothers. I managed to get 43 albums into 8 which is still too much really.

I triaged first - three boxes - known family, possible family, random animals/ stuff. Super fast go through, no thinking.
Then the known family box I just took out duplicates/ near duplicates and put away.
Possible family I cut down, and if I'd had anyone to ask I would have taken the time to try and find out. But mostly they went.
Random stuff just went in the bin

Please remember that all too soon this will become your children’s problem. So cut down to a representative few of anyone they don’t know, just keeping them from a family tree perspective. I went through hundreds and hundreds my dad had taken. Pretty much the only ones I’ve kept are of people.

I have a box full of rejects that I’ll dump as soon as my mum dies. I put those I’m keeping in archival quality plastic pouches in a loose leaf binder. I’ll be having another cull of those too.

Less is more I think. Fewer, properly labelled ones are easier to manage and to look at.

My mum’s in a care home and I’ve offered to bring in an album but she says no.

Btw I won’t be keeping the wedding album, just a few of the photos.

Of course the most valuable thing to me was the cine film from the 60s. All went AWOL, who knows where.