organizing decades of photos....help!

[ProudGrandma]

I just received 2 huge boxes of photos from my mom.  Luckily she has many of them in the original envelopes from the developer and many of them are labeled with a date.   I have 2 brothers who want photos of us kids when we were young....so my desire is to sort them by date first and then try to distribute them into 4 boxes...one for each of us kids and one for my parents, keeping them chronological. 

I think that is a good plan....but if not, and someone here has done it successfully another way, I am all ears. 

I am also thinking there really isn't any need to keep negatives, right?  I mean, that is another whole system of organizing.  We are semi-sentimental and don't want to destroy the past, but we also are realistic and understand we can't keep each and every photo and we can't cry over the ones that either can't be replaced or duplicated. KWIM?

What am I missing before I dig into this project?

thanks for your help.

 

[WildflowerMom]

I had to sort and distribute the photos when dh’s grandmother died.   She had two kids—my father in law and his sister.   So I made three piles.  One pile was pics of fil.  One pile was pics of dh’s aunt.   One pile was everything else.   That big pile of everything else then got sorted.  If I had five candid Christmas photos from 1960 that had everybody in them, I tossed the photos that were lowest quality, kept the 2, maybe 3, that were good quality and one went into aunt’s pile and one into fil’s pile.    I did that with all of them.  You’ll probably be able to narrow a decent chunk down based on good quality vs low quality alone.   It was a process.  
Oh, I didn’t keep negatives.  

[KatieJ]

I like chronological but I also would date them on the back for future viewing. 
 

[Arcadia]

I threw the negatives after I scan the photos. Then I sent my respective groups (maternal relatives, paternal relatives, ex-schoolmates) the iCloud link to the albums. My aunt who babysat me has four children and they would each want their copy of certain photos. So they could download and if they want print their own copies. We are also in three different countries so scanning old photos is more useful. The photos I have date back to the 60s.

My elderly relatives and my dad all have smartphones, and they find it convenient to be able to browse their favorite photos on their phone. My dad has my late mom’s photo as wallpaper because it makes him happier. 

[ProudGrandma]

I do not plan on scanning anything.  I don't have the right equipment or the time to do that.  I am only hoping to divide the pictures I have and call it good.  we are close enough to each (not physically) to be able to ask each other if they have a certain photo...or whatever.  I am seriously not worried about giving everyone a set of the entire collection. 

[prairiewindmomma]

Buy a photo safe archival pen and label the backs of the photos as you go along. While you can identify everyone, future generations will likely struggle. It takes a bit more time—about ten seconds a photo—but it is well worth the effort.

[ProudGrandma]

7 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Buy a photo safe archival pen and label the backs of the photos as you go along. While you can identify everyone, future generations will likely struggle. It takes a bit more time—about ten seconds a photo—but it is well worth the effort.

I own a pen like that, so I will for sure do that. 

[happi duck]

I would work pack by pack and at least write the general date on each photo.

I would keep the negatives while you're sorting and for a fixed time after you distribute the photos.  Just keeping them in the envelopes with the dud photos for a time.

[HS Mom in NC]

I did this for my grandparents (WWII service member and war bride generation) about 15 years ago. Grandad's relatives were coming from out of state for a reunion.  I grouped most photos by which of Grandad's siblings were in them. There were also small groups of photos of his parents, their siblings, and people he couldn't identify. People are more interested in their direct ancestors and direct descendants than extended relatives.  We let the direct descendants look at and take from the group of photos with their direct relatives first, then extended relatives could go through and take what was left.  

Be prepared for people to not be as interested in certain photos as you think they should be, then throw the rest away. Don't feel bad about getting rid of pics no one wants. Too many people decide they don't want all the pics, put them in a closet, then dump them on their adult children who have even less connection to the people in the pics. After a generation or two, it's to the point of being ridiculous.

Be very realistic about which you keep for yourself.  How often have you looked at the photos you have already processed and organized before these boxes of photos showed up? Of those, which ones do you actually spend time looking at and reminiscing about and which do you flip through to get to those? What made those so meaningful? Select photos to keep based on that.

And you can't destroy the past-it's already gone. You can use pics to trigger some memories and to fill in some informational gaps, but that's it.  Pics can't really do anything else for a person.

[katilac]

Sort them by rough chronology, because it really doesn't matter if Bubba had his cowboy birthday party in 1972 or 1973. That will save a lot of time.