A Huge Photo Organizing Project, Part One

 Welcome to Debbie-Dabble Blog!!

 

I am so happy you decided to stop by!!

 

 I want to mention that since Blogger changed to a new format for posting, if you can click on each picture if you care to enlarge it......

It has been a bit since I posted but right now I am so busy with a HUGE project...

Along with that, I still have my Winter and Valentine's decorations up as February is American Heart month ......

 

I am really in no hurry to move on to Spring and Easter because it is still pretty much Winter here as it is in much of the United States....

 

We had 3 more inches of snow here over a 32 hour period and more to come today....

 

I was lucky to take these photos, capturing the "Blue Hour", which is that period of twilight either in the morning or evening, right before dusk or dawn......

 After going to let out our grand pup, Faye, I did my due diligence and got my morning exercise doing my shoveling again...

Yep, I did mine and 6 of my neighbors sidewalks...... 

Only about 3 inches of snow right now but ALWAYS SO PRETTY!!!!!!

Winter is definitely far from being over here in NEPA and we have had some of our BEST snowstorms and blizzards here in the month of March!!!!

I have been asked by fellow bloggers why am I not afraid of falling in the snow when shoveling......

LOL!!

 This is my secret..

Joe was issued ice grippers each year as a letter carrier for the Post office.... 

These are the ones issued by the Post Office......

You can see the actual spike like things on the bottom of them.....

These are my $5 boots that I bought on clearance in Gabes last year with a pair of Ice Grippers that Joe bought in Ocean State Job Lot for $5 on them......

They fit easily right over the boots and even over the backless Easy Spirit or Clark's shoes that I always wear.....

These do not have the spike like things on the bottom of them like Joe's but these still prevent me from slipping which I have not done once this Winter, wearing these.......

 I have been wearing these whenever I step foot out of the house!!!!!

So I am no longer afraid of falling when it snows....

 I will not start to take down my Valentine's decorations until next week.....

 

But I will decorate my Den China Cupboard for Saint Patrick's Day soon....

 

Speaking of Easter, Ash Wednesday was this past week and with the start of Lent, many churches and other organizations have ethnic food sales in our area....

 

With the huge influx of Eastern European immigrants in the early 1900's that settled here, foods like pierogies, haluski ( cabbage and noodles) , potato pancakes, clam chowder and of course, pizza,, are the mainstays in this area!!!

 

A local Russian Orthodox church down the road from us is holding potato pancake sales every Friday during Lent and also had one for Ash Wednesday...... 

OMG!!!  They were so good!!!!!

 

And for $1.00 each were so worth the price!!!!

I want to Thank to Kris, over at Kris and Larry, Michelle, at Moms are Frugal and Lisa, over at Lisa's Everyday Life, who are the Family Cohosts of the You're the Star Blog Hop, for choosing my post, My Theme of the Year for 2021, MINDFULNESS, as one of their features for Family Week!!

 

 

Thanks so much, everyone!!

 

I also want to Thank to Julie, over at My Wee Abode, for choosing my post, a 3 Day Snow Storm ,as one of her features from last week's Tuesday Turn About Tuesdays Link Party!!! 

 

 

Thanks so much, Julie and thanks for your very kind words!!

 

Also,I want to Thank to Cecelia, over at My Thrift Store Addiction, for choosing my post, Winter at Nelson Crest and a Bit of Crafting,as her featured post from last week's Vintage Charm Party!!!

 

 

She especially liked the heart that I re-worked!!! Thanks, Cecelia for your sweet words and for the feature!!! 

 

And I also want to Thank to Katie, over at Let's Add Sprinkles, for choosing my post, A 3 Day Snow Storm, as one of her features from last week's Keep in Touch Linky Party!!! 

 

 

Thanks Katie for your sweet words and for the feature!!!!!

 

Please stop by and link up to these charming parties!!!!

 

In my last post, I shared my dear friend Anne Marie's home decorated for Winter and Valentine's......

 

 

 

 

 

 Click HERE if you missed that post.....

I mentioned  briefly in that post that I have been working on going through and re-organizing over 43 yeas of photos.....

 

 

 

It actually is about 55 years of photos as I had albums from my childhood.....

Truth be told, I started this project 2 years ago when I first had to stop working because of my inability to walk....

 

While waiting to have my Knee Replacement surgery, I located all the photos I had stored in albums and those that never made it into albums and were stored in boxes and tubs in closets, under my bed, in cabinets, etc.....

You get the picture so to speak....

I went through and organized all the photos that were still in envelopes by year to the best of my ability and put them in order of year into boxes and tubs.....

 

 

 

Then I set up one of the tables I used as a vendor for Craft Fairs in my Craft Room so I could work on this project......

 

I knew I had to take all the photos that I had in those magnetic page albums out of them as they were causing the photos to disintegrate and yellow and if I wanted to preserve them, I needed to look at other options..... 

 

 

I first thought that I would transfer all these photos into new acid free albums until I realized that not only would it cost me a small fortune to buy all those new albums but that I would also have to rent another storage shed to store all those albums filled with thousands of photos because there definitely would be no room in our home for them....

 

 

Around that time, I saw a post that spiked my interest.....

 

 

Jeanie, over at The Marmalade Gypsy, did a post, Making Friends with Your Old Photos
which was quite informative!!!

She gives great advice on identifying photos and tossing them out if they are damaged or can't identify people in them and then writing on the back of them if you do.....

I think I needed permission to throw out photos.....

You also need to identify places and events and if you can not, toss them too as they will mean nothing to future generations......

Only keep photos that tell a story, if there are several photos of the same scene, pick the best photo and throw out the rest......... 

Click HERE to read her post!

Carol, over at Comfort Spring, also did a series of 3 posts on storing photos at that time...

 

 

 

 Click HERE to read the 3rd post, which contains links to the previous 2 posts in the Series, How to Digitize Old Photos and Letters 

  

This is another really great Article on How to Store Old Photos

by  Life Storage Blog

 

 This article talks about conditions of storage like climate, ventilation, moisture and lighting....

 

After reading all these interesting articles, I thought maybe I would digitalize my photos, downloading them to the computer.... 

I realized that it would take me until the end of my life to scan each photo and download to my computer....

So now, I was on the hunt for something to store a large amount of photos inside of that would not take up much space when stored........

When I goggled photo storage options, this popped up.....

 

 

 

It held 16 smaller cases that each could hold 100 photos ..

That meant 1600 photos could be held in one of these cases and it was acid free!!!

I ordered one from Amazon at the price of $24.99 at that time 2 years ago...

I liked it a lot but then, one Sunday while looking at the Michael's circular, I see the same case now on sale from $40.99, marked down to $14.99!!!!

It also came in all clear cases so I bought 2 more and used a 20% off coupon, taking them down to about $25 for TWO cases.....

This is exactly the reason why I do not care for Amazon......

Now I know Bloggers are dropping to the floor right now that I said this but I find that I can find things in Brick and Mortar stores at a far cheaper price than on Amazon.....

In MOST cases.....

But I have used gift cards given to me by my son to buy things on Amazon that I could not find in local stores.....

Right before Christmas last year, Michael's had these on sale again but for $12.99 each!!!

Again, using a 20% off coupon, I bought 2 more for a little over $20 for TWO cases!!!!

 

Now I had my cases for storage!!!

 

 

 

Well, I had my knee replacement surgery and did not walk upstairs for one month.....

I did not go back to this project until February of last year when I did take out photos from some of those magnetic albums and put them into a case.....

I labeled the case as to the years of the pictures inside of it......

I labeled the outside of each individual case with the month and year of the photos inside of it.....

 

 

Inside each small case, I wrote on a piece of paper the events and dates, if I knew them, of the photos it contained....

 

Again, I got busy doing other things like gardening in the Summer and decorating for different Holidays so this project again was at a standstill.....

 

Over the last few weeks, I started, and am quite proud to say, another huge project and that was going through, weeding out and re-organizing EVERYTHING in my Craft Room!!!!!

 

It took me over 2 weeks to accomplish this!!!!

 

These are just a few sneak peek photos as I plan on doing a post in the future on the Craft Room.....

 

After I finished this, I still had that table with all those photos and cases sitting underneath it in the Craft Room......

 

 

 

So I decided that I needed to get to work again on this project......

 

 

 I went through and removed all the photos from all those albums that I had from 1978 up until 1991.......

 

 And since they were already in chronological order, I was able to easily put them into the smaller cases and get everything labeled...... 

These are a bunch of empty binders that once were filled with photos on those magnetic pages......

 

I may be able to use some of these for a scrap booking project that I also have to do....

I then started to attack all the photos that never made it into photo albums and were never labeled as to year ...

This is when I turned into a detective of sorts......

 

 Luckily, I had kept the date mode on the camera so the date was on the bottom of some of them and when developing them, certain places put the dates on the back of the pictures...

 

I also looked at my hair, which changed all the time in length, color, straight or permed, but I could always narrow it down to the same year...

 

1985 going to a Christmas party from work with my friend Jan.....

 

 

1987 at Claws and Paws Animal Park in the Pocono's

 

1990 Our son Joey's Communion

 

1992 with my Mom at Caesar's in Atlantic City....

 

And 1994 at Caesar's in one of the suites that we got to stay in for FREE!!

 

 I thought you would get a good laugh out of those photos!!!!

 

I had the boys first holy communion and confirmations on VHS and DVD's so that gave me those years and I was able to figure out by how we looked what else went on in those years.....

 

I knew that if my Mother had brown hair, those pics were before my nephew John's wedding in 1993 for which she let her hair go gray...

 

 I also enlisted the help of my son, Joey who remembered what grade he was in...

 

Joe was of no help whatsoever because he hardly remembered anything. 

 

I knew trips to NJ were all before 1998 when Joe started working at the Post Office because he could not get time off for the first 6 years he worked there.....

So through these powers of deduction, I was able to at least narrow down the years of these pictures......

I kept working for 2 weeks and I have finally filled all 5 of those cases with pictures!!!!!!

1600 a piece....

5 cases......

 

 so there are at least 8000 pictures in those 5 cases!!!!!!

Eventually, I will going through those cases again and maybe weed out more photos and hopefully, print on the computer a slip of paper to put into each individual case as to what the photos inside of it are of.....

But for now, I just wanted to be able to get this far on this project.....

Now where did I store these cases??????

Back in the hall coat closet downstairs where all the albums were stored before but I was able to free up the space where I had all those envelopes of photos stashed!!!

 

 8000 photos all stored in this small space.....

I may eventually move them under our bed when I move some other things out from under it but for now, they will stay here....

Did I have enough cases of all the photos that I wanted to put into them????

 

NO!!!

 

LOL!!!

 

I need one more case but right now, Michael's has them out of stock.....

 

But I made it up to 2001 which after that, I do not have a lot of family photos.....

 

 I have continued to go through envelopes and identify the years of the photos and have them in a box in chronological order with a slip of paper inside of each envelope stating what events the photos are of.....

I still have several small albums that I actually had filled with photos of the house decorations before I started to blog and of events I went to as a member of a Victorian Society.....

 

I have some family photos mixed in inside of these albums so I have to empty them all out too!!

 

 
 

 

I will be doing something different with all of these photos as these are photos that I am sure my family will not want after I am gone so I will organize them differently so when the time comes, they can simply toss them as is.....

You can see all the cast offs in the garbage can which I need to empty......

 I took one of the albums that just had sleeves for photos and I pulled all the pictures of our sweet Fur Babies and made up an album of just them so we can look back and smile and remember them........

My sweet girls are waiting at the Rainbow Bridge for us......

 

In Part Two of this Photo Organizing Project, I will be sharing how I will be organizing, labeling and storing other Photos that are important to me but will not be to my family when I am gone......

Click HERE to see Part Two!!

I hope you found that maybe you can use some of the tips I mentioned in this post as many of you have mentioned to me on face book that you need to organize your own photos......

To all my Blogger friends in Texas who have no power, no heat and no water, I am praying for your safety and that this issues will be resolved soon!!!!!

 I hope you will stop by to visit again soon!!

Stay safe, healthy and most of all, HAPPY!!

Thanks to those who took the time out of their busy day to spend a little bit of time with me!!

If you do not have a blog, PLEASE  give me some way to reply to your comment, maybe by including your email in your comment.  If I can not find a way to reach you, I will reply on the post where you commented so please check back......

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