Organizing my Photos

Thought you would be seeing my tote organization....ya, me too, lol.
But I can't just have one task going at a time, I need many.

I have been worried about my photos in these sticky paged albums.
The adhesive they use (or used) on these albums are not archival safe.
Over the years the adhesive deteriorates your photos and makes them brittle
I have planned on taking them out of here for years.
Today was the day!

Some of the albums were difficult to take the photos off, and other the photos practically fell off.
See how the adhesive effects the photos.
The top left one is so discoloured.
I was going to discard this one, but my daughter (Ashley who is a photographer) told me she could invert the colour (or something like that) so I kept it.
See the cute short haired girl on the bottom left...thats me ;)
There is a long story about that hair cut...but that is another story.

Look how the pages have discoloured around the edges...that is what happens to paper over the years if the paper isn't acid free.

I used these tools to pry and lift the photos off of the pages.
Some were stuck on there good...or should I say bad.
Most are not damaged from the front, but this one really didn't want to come off.
Plus I was so over this process, and may have lost my patience.

If this wasn't enough of a challenge for me, I also asked my siblings for their albums of our childhood photos to scan them as well.
After taking off all of the photos, then came the tedious process of putting the photos in chronological order.
Which wasn't the easiest as my mom wasn't very organized ...... she had old black and white photos with more recent coloured photos. Also only a few photos had the year on them.
Plus my mom passed away years ago and all of our relatives have either passed away or live so far away, putting them in some kind of order was little like playing a detective.
This is where searching for details in the photos help a lot....."he is wearing a wedding ring, so this is after mom and dad were married"
Or even looking at the size of the photos or the background colour of the photo paper.
My daughter was really good at this.

I purchased a photo album with sleeves to put the photos in so they wouldn't get out of order before scanning.
My daughter Heather had this job.
We did this while FaceTiming with my daughter Kristy, who is in Italy, and told us about her day :)
In between prying photos off of the album pages, I took many breaks with this little cutie.
I am so lucky that my family lives so close and that they actually enjoy spending time with me, teehee.
Making memories everyday :)

We still have so much more to do and I will share with you more on our process when we are closer to being done.

I hope you all have a very Creative Day today.

Tracy :)