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I stopped printing out family photos.
I stopped because I got lazy. But mostly because I was overwhelmed with the prints as they piled up. I didn’t have time to put them scrapbooks or even to slide them into photo albums. I ordered gads and gads of photos when Shutterfly ran their promotions. Thanks to my smartphone, I take way more photos of the kids than I used to. But they just live on my phone or in the cloud in my Dropbox.
Nowadays, I only print out photos if the kids need a one for a school project.
After reading Dead Wake by Erik Larson with my From Left to Write book club, I realized that if something were to happen, electronic photos will be the most challenging to maintain. When the Lusitania sank, people were able to dry out photographs, letters, and journals in order to preserve its history and memories.
Who knows if it the external hard drive I’m using now will be accessible in 10 years? Or after I’m gone.
Both of the kids love looking at their baby books, especially the photos. Though I apologize to my youngest now for being a total slacker on his baby book. You know, second child syndrome and all.
Starting today, I will print out a few photos every week so we can pull them out of my pile/box further down the road. My kids will want these photos when they’re older and have family of their own. I won’t beat myself up if I never organize the photos. One step at a time right? Just printing the photos is a step in preserving our family’s memories.
Why wouldn’t I want to preserve gems like this one of Jaxson? It’s hard to describe his personality to someone, but this photo say sit all.
Or how proud Sophia felt when she baked her first batch of cookies, all by herself?
While I’ll print small batches on my printer, I definitely plan on taking advantage of printing photos via Shutterfly, especially when they have their penny a photo promotions.
Will you join me and print out more photos of your family?
This post was inspired by Dead Wake by Erik Larson, a thrilling account of Lusitania’s last voyage across the Atlantic Ocean and the U-boat that attacked it. Join From Left to Write on March 26th as we discuss Dead Wake. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.
You and me both! This is a really great goal. And I think putting the photos into boxes is perfectly fine for photo organization. It doesn't diminish how fun it is to look through the photos!
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Maybe when I'm retired I can organize the boxes with my future grandkids!
I need to do this so badly. We had professional family photos done this fall, because the only photos printed and hung in our house are from our wedding (7 years ago), my SIL's wedding (3 years ago) and from when our son was born (almost 4 years ago) and I wanted more photos to hang. I haven't printed a single one. Maybe this will be a good nesting project since I am not allowed to lift anything this pregnancy 😉
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That would be a great idea! You can do it right from bed if you want.
My mother recently sent me two boxes of old photos. They aren’t organized; they span decades; and I’m not even sure who all of the people are in the photos. But it was great to look through them. I have told myself for years that I’ll print the photos when I can get organized, but your post reminds me that just printing them is the important part. Organizing into albums is not required!