How To Store Family Photos & My Why: Part 2 » Living Life with Meredith

Welcome to part 2 of the Family Photo Scanning Project: How To Store Family Photos & My Why for doing this!

Why I Started The Photo Scanning Project

You’re probably wondering why on earth I decided to do this & why I kept doing it when I discovered how many photos there were. So here’s why:

I’ve always had a love of photos. I’ve always felt that photos were extremely important and now I believe that even more. The majority of those photos I had never seen before & being one of the youngest in my family, I didn’t know my cousins when they were kids so it was fun to see those photos of them. I was able to see photos of my aunt & uncle & my dad as kids and my grandparents when they were younger. But even more importantly, I got to see photos of people that I never met or who died when I was very young and have no memories of.

My grandparents lost two children. One when she was 5. She was and is not talked about. I knew she existed, I knew her name, how old she was, where they lived at the time, and that was it. I didn’t know what she looked like. I didn’t know if she and her siblings got along. I didn’t know anything about her. She & the loss of her felt very matter of fact to me. I knew about her and the loss of her but it never felt really real.

Until those photos.

The first photo I saw of her I knew it was her. Seeing the photos of her made her infinitely more real. She was a person. She was a cute and happy little girl. My grandparents experienced a devastating loss that they never spoke of. Seeing photos of her and my uncle and aunt and grandparents broke my heart because the photos of her brought her to life for me.

The second child they lost was when he was an adult. It was right after my second birthday and unfortunately, I have no memories of him but I have heard great stories. His death felt more real to me but the photos amplified the loss even more. The photos of him emphasized all of those stories I had been told. They brought him to life for me. They brought the loss and the impact of his loss on the rest of my family members to life for me.

That’s why photos are important.

You never know when the last photo of a person is going to be the last one. You never know when the photos are going to be a connecting point for someone else. You never know how much you’re going to value those photos until later when you’ve lost loved ones & those photos can bring back memories.

Take the photo and take it happily. I am forever grateful that all of those photos were taken and that I have been able to see a part of my family that I never knew and that those that have gone before me have become all the more real to me.

How To Store Family Photos

Not all, but a decent portion, of the 3,000 photos I found were older so making sure they are stored in the right environment was/is vital to making sure these photos last a really long time. Even with the more recent photos (last 15 or so years), they need to be stored well so they last a long time.

The keys to storing family photos: climate-controlled (room-temperature), well-ventilated, a dark space, off the floors, in photo-safe boxes and sheet protectors that are used for archival purposes and are acid-free.

Scrapbook box that was used for the bigger family photos & various mementos.

I used two different types of boxes. One was a generic scrapbook box that I used to hold all mementos & photos that were bigger than a 4×6. All of the photos went into sheet protectors & were labeled by what photos are in there.

I chose to name the “original” Moore family (my grandparents, dad, aunts & uncles) as the Nuclear Moore Family. (Reminder: nuclear means a couple & their dependents.) From there, each of the kids were labeled with “Family–kid’s name”. Any photos that involved people from across the various family units were labeled “Cross Nuclear Families”.

Sheet protectors with labels for the bigger family photos

The other container has individual boxes inside of it that can hold photos 4×6 or smaller that I also labelled with what was inside. I used a label maker that we’ve had for years to create the labels. They last for a long time so I knew that’d be the best way to label everything. Storing them in this way not only keeps them organized and allows you to find photos easily but they are also safe for photos and will keep them safe for years to come.

Storage container for the 4x6 & smaller family photos.

How I Labeled the Actual Photos

Part of storing family photos is labeling them so future generations can know who is in what photos. After a discussion of what would be the best and easiest way to label the photos, we decided on the best method for us. We wrote the names & dates on a sheet of paper, cut it out to fit the text, and then used Scotch tape to tape it to the back of the photo. For random photos, we’d occasionally use a regular ball-point pen & lightly write the name(s) on the back. But I know that’s not the most recommended way to do it.

PRO-TIP: GET HELP! Labeling the photos went so much quicker because I had help! I named the people in the photos & my cousin did all of the writing. Keeping the photos in stacks per each sheet of paper & cutting the labels in order made it a lot easier too. She & I split the cutting & taping and y’all–we moved so fast! We had close to 200 photos we were labeling & it took us 2 days. Without help, I’d probably still be working on it. Seriously though, it would’ve taken me 3x that to get it done on my own.