My daughter organized years of photos for me while she was on maternity leave 18 years ago. She organized them by subject and date and put all info on the backs. They were put in envelopes in storage boxes. I am so envious of her patience and organizational skills.

We have a chest of drawers full pictures of our 53 years of marriage, children, grandchildren, vacations, travels, living overseas, etc. For our 50th Wedding anniversary party, I scanned about 300 photos from over the years; from our teen years in high school when we met, through all the years and put them on DVD so we could have them playing while everyone was at the party . It took me about 2 weeks to scan all those pics.
Since my DH was in the AF and we lived all over, we didn't see the family much. So when they saw all the pics of my DH and me when we were young and traveling and living all over ( like in front of the pyramids, the Effiel Tower, The London Bridge, Buckingham Palace, on a cruise, etc). We had swim suits, shorts, evening gowns and tuxes, suits, etc. on, they were blown away.
They didn't realize how beautiful and thin we were when we were young!!! It was a fantastic walk down memory lane. We now have them on one of the rolling picture frames that uses a USB stick with all the photos on it.
I don't think I will scan all the ones left in the chest of drawers. The DC and DGC can do it when we are gone...

For those of you who have scanned photos, what kind of scanner do you use? Have to admit I never thought of doing this. I think it would be easier for me to handle this process than it would be to mount photos in an album or on cards. I have always worried about ruining the photos. How good are the scanned versions.

Well you can put them on cd's. I gave the first bunch to my daughter and she is scanning them and putting them on cd's. That is the easy way. I have lots of videos from my mothers trips that I need to put on dvd's Not as easy.
Good luck. It is an overwhelming job. I have started sorting out the pictures not worth keeping and that will make the pile not so intimidating.
Lynda

After our Mom passed my little sister took the home movies to one of the colleges that has a photography class- they put them on DVD's really cheap-all she paid for was the materials they used. But Mom and I went through all the pictures on my visits and separated them for each of us and our kids so there would be no squabbling later. We have traded and copied pictures of our parents so we all have them. My son put every ones pictures on USB's so we all have access to all of Mom's pictures now. I like knowing that he down loaded them on to my computer as well as on the USB for back-up and I still have the real pictures. I made a small shoe bag / envelope to slide them into and I carry the USB's in my purse.

I took the time to scan the thousands of photos of my mom's. It worked out wonderful and I distributed flash drives to my siblings of all the photos. Many pf the originals were crumbling with age. The only thing I would do is to create a backup copy of all of them. I sorted them on my computer and put into files. Afterall, I don't need a copy of my sister's 5th birthday. When my computer crashed, all my photos and I do mean ALL the photos were scrambled. Now I have photos of my parents in college next to my son's birthdays. So I have to go back thru all of them and recatagorize them. Yikes.

I needed to clean some drawers out because of needed space. Had couple file boxes. Put my sons' names on the boxes. Put photos that concerned them and their girls in to the appropriate boxes. If there were photos of both sons, I put into our box. Filled up pretty quickly. I got some folders I had and did put some of photos in the file folders. I use all archival to protect them. Used coupons. I go through little by little and only do like 10-15 minute purges. I've gotten them pretty organized by just a few minutes at a time. I usually do this maybe on a Saturday morning while watching the quilt/craft shows on PBS. DH hates doing this but I only involve him for very short periods of time. It has made a difference and my drawers are lighter. Point is just purge a few minutes at a time. You'd be surprised how much you get done.

I also had a few boxes of photos...just kept them allllll around me in the cold days of winter & started sorting! I have 3 children, and made a box for each...then I made an album for each. That solved a lot of it!! fuzzy ones, beheaded ones...got pitched!! others, well MOST!! got put in albums. It's hard to believe how difficult it was to remember the time frame & some of the people in those photos!! Enjoy!!!! : )

I bought one of the scanners that you just feed the pictures through and put everything on flash drives. Each kid has their own stick and grandparents and greats are all on the same flash drive. Now I just have to make myself toss the original pics.

Scanning is a great idea for photos. I'd want to keep the original, though. I'd sort them, then scan and put them in albums--all as one process. This way you don't have to handle them too much--just do a handful at a time rather than tackling the whole mountain. Once they are in an album, you know they are DONE. :)

I agree about the film. Though it may be costly, a professional would be my choice.