What to do about photos

[CrowFriend]

Have been in our home 20 years and 10 years in the one before that - 4 DC. Worked full time for many years and house became a bit neglected …
I spent last year decluttering and repairing and decorating so house is all up together now - finally! Great feeling.
But now the last thing is the photos.
I have albums up to 2010 then wallets of photos ( about 30) for 2012. I know what to do about them - put them in albums after culling all the poor photos.
But I’ve got 10 years of photos on my phone/iCloud which is 17000 photos.
I’ve Just downloaded ‘Slidebox’ to enable me to more readily organise and cull them on my phone/cloud. It’s taking ages and attrition rate is about 50%.

So I’m guessing I’m going to have about 8000 photos to print out. Which is nuts even if it is for 10 years.

The cost will be at least 5p per print (£400 total). I particularly want 7x5 not 6x4 as my sight isn’t great.

Can anyone think of a better way???

That’s nuts (kindly) - you don’t need, and will never look at, 8,000 printed photos.

Pick a sensible number for each year - say 50. One per week sounds fine. Then find 50 that you like from each year and print those.

Don’t stress about finding the best 50 - that will be a mammoth task - just ones that make you happpy.

Keep the rest digitally, so if you have unlimited time you can do more.

Why are you printing them out?!

I'm currently doing the opposite and digitising all the piles and piles of printed photos we have!

@MartinMartinMarti yep, you’re right. It would be nuts to print 8000! Trouble is I get seduced by all the memories!
Your proposed method sounds good - thanks for taking the time to help. I couldn’t see the woods for the trees!
@namechange30455 I want some printed because there’s something really nice about passing around an album- the ones we’ve got get picked up every now and then. The adult DC seem to really enjoy the occasional trip down memory lane and it would just feel weird doing it on a laptop.
But maybe that’s nuts as well 😀

I wouldn't be creating more clutter.
I would get a few digital photo frames, sort out the photos you like and upload onto the frames.
That way you can see the photos but they aren't taking up space.

Well to me clutter is stuff that you don’t use or need - photos of many precious or interesting moments in raising our family are important to me. So I’m going to cull more books ( I only really read kindle books now and the print is too small in the paperbacks I do have anyway) and put the albums on the freed-up space on the book shelves. Up to now because the albums are readily accessible they do get looked at from time to time ( apart from the wedding album 😟).
Thanks for the suggestion of the digital photo frame @oncemoreunto - tbh they’ve never appealed to me but I think needs must so I’ll give one a try!

I honestly don't think you need to print them out and certainly not all of the 8000! You can combine photos into photo grid collages and print them out as that or make slideshows and play on digital photo frames or have on your PC. I'd also look for the best of the best to print them out and stick to 50 as max.

I have a large Nixplay frame in the living room. I love watching the photos roll by. I see them more than I would if they were in an album. When I take one’s on my phone now that I really like I can just upload them via the app. I bought my parents a Nixplay frame too and can sent pictures to their frame.
If you really like passing round an album maybe do as a PP says and choose some of your favourites from each year and get a photo book made.

I wouldn't print them, OP, I'd get them made into photo books, which take a lot less space on a shelf.

Only print ones with people in them, and only a couple per event. Eg say you took DC to the zoo for their birthday. Print one of them at the zoo and one of them blowing out their candles but don’t print any of the animals.

Photo books definitely- select 50 per year as previously suggested and let the software generate the layout etc so don't get dragged into editing / moving / adding captions etc.

Ps how are you finding Slidebox and what does it do?? I'm trying to find the motivation to start a similar project - have deleted up to 2018 but still a way to go!

i love photo albums! on new year’s day each year i select about 30 photos from the previous year and put only those in an actual album. i use free print to do it. then I cull the years photos on my phone.

I love photo albums too! I would do as PP suggested and print photobooks.

For sorting/deleting I'm currently using Gemini Photos and it's been so brilliant I paid for the annual subscription option. I have over 27000 photos going back almost 15 years but have deleted over 2000 in the last few days (plus about 400 videos). It sorts them into similar, duplicates, blurred, videos, screenshots, notes and others. Within each category they are sorted further by similarity or date so it's easy to tackle in short bursts. You just swipe up to keep, down to delete. It also has a photo radar which keeps tabs on any new photos. If you're like me and screenshot stuff and take daft photos for your pals that you don't necessarily want to keep, it's brilliant.

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions!
I am browsing various digital photo frames and will give one or two a try.

@FusionChefGeoff Slidebox is pretty good although I ended up paying £8 ish to get the ad- free version. It essentially allows you to delete and organise photos into folders much much more quickly than just within the iPhone photo app. But it fully syncs with the iPhone photo app so all your new folders are there and retains the metadata such as when they were taken.

Whilst sorting through them all, I’m looking for certain photos.
I’m ultimately aiming for is 3 frames to go on the wall each with 4 apertures ( one for each DC) - a frame for first day at secondary school, one for leaving for uni and one for a photo of each which really highlights their personality. I already have one of each of them as toddlers and of first day at school

I’ve also found some lovely black and white photos of great grandfathers ( chimney sweep and in-service). They’ll be framed too.

I will take the advice to be brutal in what I print out.

The husband and dogs can stay digital 😀.

@StooriMidori yes I am like you and have loads of random screenshots which are very satisfying to delete! Gemini sounds good - no idea if any better than Slidebox but I’m committed now with £8!
Also loads of WhatsApp camera roll stuff from the DC.
It’s rather nice looking through a lot of the photos - often it’s the stuff in the background that is most interesting. Like my mum on her mobile phone - she was the first person I knew to have one and it was the size of a housebrick!

Also the TV in our lounge at our last house which was the first big thing I bought when I was able to get HP in 1984. At the time I thought it was great but it looks ridiculously small on its bandy little legs in the photo.

@mumonthehill I will aspire to do this from now on!

I agree digital photo frames are great -you are treated to a scroll-through of photos that would otherwise lie unseen in an album. What worries me though is the accelerating pace of technology - could these digital frames go out of date and the photos become inaccessible in future? A reason to keep any hard-copy originals - but maybe keep them in the loft for now?

Hard copies / albums are easier to hand down generations too. Mums started going through hers and every now and then I get a little pile of my childhood

Good point. A memory stick or external hard drive is pretty safe ( and the cloud should be even safer) for digital backups.
I’ve ordered a couple of photo storage boxes from Amazon - they’re quite dinky but hold about 1000 photos so that’s where I plan to put photos which don’t make it to an album or digital photo frame but are of sufficient interest to keep.

@FusionChefGeoff yes!! Seeing the changing hairstyles for the teenage DC is hilarious btw … it’s a rite of passage

I make my husband a photo book every year for Christmas, it's one of his 'main' presents.

They're fab, an easily storable, flick throughable memory of the year. We've got nine now (together 8 years, there was a bonus wedding one), and they come out quite regularly - DSD10 gets them out ALL THE TIME!

I use photobox, but buy their 70% off vouchers in November, and prep the book in early December for a Christmas delivery. 50 odd pages (about 150 pics) usually costs me about £45.

I bought an external hard drive for photos so we can add them on from any device.

Print out some special ones but you don't need 8000

I use snap fish every year for ours. Really easy to use. I try to get in done in January each year- but we’re in feb now and I have barely started!

I second @SlipperTripper. Before she died my mother gave me a packet of at least 200 old photos from my childhood snd before. I got them all scanned and plan to make up three photo books for me and my sisters to keep.
My husband passed away when my kids were small and I have thousands of photos to go through. I will select the best and put those in a book for each of my kids.
Things on a memory stick will not get looked at, but a physical book will be. You just have to spend some time editing those pics!

@CrowFriend

Good point. A memory stick or external hard drive is pretty safe ( and the cloud should be even safer) for digital backups. I’ve ordered a couple of photo storage boxes from Amazon - they’re quite dinky but hold about 1000 photos so that’s where I plan to put photos which don’t make it to an album or digital photo frame but are of sufficient interest to keep.

Both my parents have died, and I got several boxes of photos like this. I had no idea what the photos were of (hardly any people, lots of sea and landscapes), so I got rid of them. I don't think my father ever looked at them, and to be honest, to me, the sole purpose of photos is to be looked at. I also inherited a couple of photo albums from each of my parents from before they married - those are fascinating, labelled and easy to look through. I'll be framing some of them. I think it's too easy to take thousands of photos these days, and the quantity makes them less important, somehow.

I now rarely take photos without a person in it!