The Family Archive

Hello all!

Welcome to this blog.  I have spent the past few years trying to organize old family photos in a meaningful way and save many from being lost.  I'm hoping to share my methods with anyone out there trying to start their own archive.

I did not actively start working on this project until 2022 and only then it was because I had gotten overwhelmed with the amount of photos I suddenly had.  Several different relatives had given me large batches of photos throughout the years.

My first photos were picture I had taken as a young adult in the early 2000s (I am so old) and I kept these in shoeboxes with the intention of someday getting photo albums.  These also included my wedding pictures!  I had attempted scrapbooking but it was not for me.

In addition to these, shortly after I got married, my mother-in-law had given me my husband's old baby book and baby and childhood photos.  I kept those in a separate box.  

Later, my mother-in-law and her husband moved away and before leaving she gave me her old wedding album from her first marriage (to my husband's father) since she did not want to keep them and knew I would not throw them away.  The album was falling apart and those photos ended up in a separate box.  That was in 2012.

Around 2018, my Aunt Robin decided to downsize and dropped off at my house several boxes of loose family photos, film negatives and even a couple of CDs

After that, my aging parents moved in with thousands more photographs and my sister-in-law sent me what she had.

In all - from old photos to film negatives to modern photos taken on our phones - this collection is over 17,000 images.

This blog is going to discuss my methodologies for organizing the photos, how I scan photos, how I store the photos, and everything in between.

Stay tuned!