I'm not a scrapbook person, not even a good album person. The most important thing is to put names and dates on the backs of pictures! Mine are pretty much filed by year but are loose so that what is written on the back is easily seen. Pictures of people that my children would not know are being given to families of those "unknowns". As to family pictures--I do genealogy and have a page for each person. Then I put a few good pictures of those people with their page. It helps bring names and faces together. Good place to file those Christmas letters that we enjoy and then wonder what to do with them. Good reference for the family as time passes. As to movies, those can be put on tape but now technology moves forward and need to catch up on that. Reel to reel transferred to vcr tapes and now it's cd's/flash drives--what's next?! Even those scenes that you may not treasure now may be special as years pass so I'd recommend not editing anything out.

Last year my husband took all the pictures we had taken of our children while they were growing up and sorted them by child (we have a son and 2 daughters). He took over the guest bed to sort. We then delivered them to each of the kids. Our grandchildren have enjoyed seeing the pictures of their parents as kids. We kept the pictures of graduations, marriages, and new houses of the kids. They already had copies of this. It took almost 6 months for him to finish, but it was a success. Including 3 plastic boxes emptied. YEH!!!!

My husband and I worked together sorting pictures into boxes his family, my family, each of our 3 kids with their kids. For Christmas this year we put together picture books for each of our 3 kids starting with our ancestors, great-great grandparents and on down to our kids and grandkids. Most of the history on the pages was written by my husband. The books were huge but our kids and grandkids love going through them. It does get to be a big project but fun to remember the things we did as a family. My husband is now putting the pictures on CDs.

You are not alone. I have one very full shoebox and there never seems to be any time left over in my day to start sorting them.

Organizing photos
 

Initially, to organize all the photos, I separated them by year. I used photo boxes with index card dividers.
From those photos, I pulled out all the 3 children and 15 grandchildren photos and sorted them by name. I have had good luck finding photos using this method and travel excursions get sorted by date. It forced me into determining dates for the photos, which was good.


I scanned all the photos of my three children for scrapbooks using a Canon Pixma copier/printer. It accommodates copying of slides also. If the photos needed editing, I used Paint Shop Pro software. When I gave the children their scrapbooks, I included a c.d. of (1) their own scrapbooks and those of their siblings; and (2) all their pictures (whether I used them in their scrapbooks or not). They got pictures of their siblings too this way.


I am not done yet - I have more old slides from my parents to scan.....maybe this year.

Good luck on your project. I worked on this a long time. In my opinion, it takes more patience than expertise.

Life happens.....if nothing else find a way to get names, dates, and maybe places on the photos. Write lightly with color that shows up on the back of those old grey photo card boards. My father and grandmother wrote on many of our photos (for which I am grateful) but they used red ink, sometimes on the front of the photo. If making a note on the back of regular photographs do not press hard, it makes ridges on the front. If possible do not cut off those cardboard frames and do not take the name and place of the photographer off. If the names and towns are left intact sometimes one can figure out who is in the picture when they know where family members lived. I have 3 of those...only knew who it was by the name of the town. We have 30 years in genealogy. Good luck.

My Mom sorted out all thepictures by subjuct (each kid, grand kid, etc....) Then the ones she wanted to keep she put in
a few albums, the others went to each of us. I personally love my first nude photo..... I was about a month old. When I think about it......I am still chubby as I was back then......LOL