Antique Trunk

 

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errorTame Those Memories
By: Barbara Hemphill

Family vacations summer weddings and family reunions are in full swing and the warm memories and envelopes of photographs are ever growing! You certainly intend to organize them but the boxes in the attic are full of intentions and now the photograph CDs are being to pile up! What can you do to stop the madness

Step 1: Decide why you are saving the photographs. My mother inlaw for example wants to ensure them for future generations which means acidfree paper and detailed labeling. One of my clients on the other hand just wants to enjoy them now. She has an antique trunk full of loose photographs (with names and dates!) she uses to tell stories to her fascinated grandchildren.

Step 2: Dont set unreal expectations. Mary had a house full of photographs of her 18monthold duplicates in fact because she was always going to send them to her mother. But first she wanted to write a letter explaining the picture the birthday party the trip to the zoo or the first haircut. There wasnt time for that so her mother hadnt seen a picture of her grandson in months and Mary felt overwhelmed by her failure. Undoubtedly her mother would have been delighted to see the photos without the perfect narrative descriptions. If you are a working parent with active children the best way to organize your photographs for now may be a shoebox in the front hall closet with the lid off so you can get to it easily!

Step 3: Avoid tackling too much at one time. Dolly decided to organize 25 years of photos. She declared the living and dining room offlimits to her family and began making piles. In the midst of the project old friends called to say they were in town. So Dolly quickly gathered up all her piles and stuffed them in a suitcase. Several years later theyre still there! Begin organizing your photos by sorting them into major time blocks before kids preschool elementary school high school college for example. Put each category into a large container. Then take one container and divide it into smaller categories by year then by season and finally by months.

(Keep your old calendars. They can be a great resource to retrieve specific dates for major events!)

Step 4: Eliminate the unnecessary. The first candidates for the wastebasket are double exposures pictures of the inside of your lens cap and those shots you wonder why you took. You are also bound to find some photos that have little meaning to you but could be special to someone else. Drop them in the mail to bring a smile to Aunt Amandas face. As a birthday present for my 85 yearold grandmother I took one photo of each of the members of her family and one or two of each of the major events in her life and put it in one album. It was the first thing she shared with every visitor.

Step 5: Taming the Paper Tiger software to the Rescue! The beauty of using The Paper Tiger for taming your photos is its incredible flexibility! You can put a number on each photo (or photo holder) with keywords dates and a category for each one. Or you can put a number of an entire packet of photos and then use the keyword field to describe specific contents. This is a great way to solve the problem of the packet of Johnnys wedding photos that also contains a single photo of Jennys new car. Organizing photo CDs with Paper Tiger is also a cinch. Just put a number on the CD and use the keywords to describe the contents. A keyword search on Johnnys wedding will instantly tell you where to find the portrait (on the wall in the hallway) the packet of photos (in the family room credenza) and the photo CD (in the CD box by the computer).

Bonus: Organizing photographs can be a great summer project to do with children of all ages!

Barbara Hemphill is the author of Kiplingers Taming the Paper Tiger at Work and Taming the Paper Tiger at Home and coauthor of Love It or Lose It: Living ClutterFree Forever. The mission of Hemphill Productivity Institute is to help individuals and organizations create and sustain a productive environment so they can accomplish their work and enjoy their lives. We do this by organizing space information and time. We can be reached at 8004270237 or at www.ProductiveEnvironment.com


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