I’ve talked in a couple of previous posts about the challenges of keeping track of all the information and the photographs that we have for our family history. My post about the photographs covered the digital side of organizing. Now we needed to come up with a storage and organizing solution for the actual photographs.

We looked at a number of options – boxes, albums, and so forth. One of the challenges was the vast range of sizes of pictures. The smallest are cut apart photos from a photo booth – about 1 inch by 1 1/2 inch. The largest are 8 inch by 10 inch. Most are somewhere around 3 inch by 5 inch. We decided that we wouldn’t try to put the largest in with all the others. There aren’t very many of them.

The next question was how to organize them. I wanted to come up with something that matched our digital organization so that at some future date, I (or someone else) could be looking at the list and be able to locate the original with ease.

The solution

We located these photo storage boxes (acid free). The larger case holds 18 smaller cases. Each smaller case will hold about 100 5 inch by 7 inch photographs. We decided to start with 3 cases, but may need to add more.

The pictures will be divided by family, so the Hoel-Link pictures will be separate from the Kellogg-James ones. I used our trusty label maker to start marking the inner boxes.

I am starting with the first couple of decades as one box each. The later decades are two boxes each. I can always add more boxes and relabel as needed.

We are using the same date system that we used for the digital copies of the photographs. I am using a number 2 pencil to note on the back of the picture the digital file name. I am also writing any additional information we have about the people, places, events and dates of the pictures.

So this picture of Dale Ransbottom, Sadie Hoel Ransbottom and Walt from Louisiana in June of 1966 is labeled on the back with the matching digital file. We have year, month, location, H for Hoel, and three digits at the end as we add to the folder on the computer. This one is the 4th photo I put in the 1966 folder.

Hopefully you found this interesting and it gave you some ideas on how you might organize your own pictures.