Photo Overload

I seem to do this every so often. Get overwhelmed by photographs, that is. While pulling out embroidery thread the other day, I also pulled out an identically sized box full of pictures. There’s very little rhyme or reason to what’s in the box, but I am my own victim. I can only guess that I crammed them in there in a moment of creative frustration when needing to see clear space. It’s hard to be a creative and a neat freak at the same time. These two personality traits have minor fights with each other all the time.

Where to start…

• Throwing out pictures that are no longer relevant (my children are rejoicing even tho they don’t know why 😂). Fuzzy pictures taken at 17 while trying to capture the sun’s rays while it was behind a tree are not worth preserving. Same thing with fuzzy pictures of people you don’t recognize. On the other hand, the now friend I used to TA for when I was in high school, is in an envelope with a note to him and his wife. Even if it’s a little fuzzy. He can throw it out!! Once the culling is done, including duplicates,
• Keep photos in envelopes with their negatives, or anything identifying the years they were taken.
• Stack loose photos in some sort of logical order (there may be more than one type of logic!), and then start at the beginning…

The oldest picture I found in the box is of me in 2nd grade. I’ll pull out my mom’s photo albums (2) and see if it’s there, and then decide what to do with it. Obviously, if mom’s albums don’t have it, I’ll add it, but if they do… I will likely take a deep breath and throw it away. Then, onto the high school grad pics of me… Same thing. Then onto the next oldest stack of pics, and appropriate albums.

There are so many more interesting and gratifying things to do than this! And things like this left undone, now that I discovered the mess, tease and taunt me, relentlessly.