My Organized Photos

BEFORE
Last spring I began organizing my photos. Some of them were in various albums, some of which were falling apart. The rest of the unscrapped photos were stored in this plastic box. This box held all of our snapshots as well as professional pictures, Christmas card extras, and school yearbook photos.



AFTER

I have worked on getting those pictures out of the box and the albums and into these photo safe storage boxes for months now! I worked on it little by little--15 minutes here and there. It's finally complete! All of our photos are in these boxes!

Since I began so long ago, Hobby Lobby did not have anymore of the original boxes I began with.....therefore I have 3 different colors of boxes. Yes this bothers me, but what can I do?

The larger white box to the left holds the non 4 x 6 pictures.....the professional 5 x 7s, school pictures, extra Christmas cards, and a zip lock bag of negatives.

I labeled each box with the years that the photos were taken. I simply sorted them by the year. Thankfully, I could still remember which year the pictures were made!



These category boxes are mostly empty so far.

Now, I plan to go through my photos and pull out ones that I would like to scrapbook.....and place them in the appropriate box. I am so excited about being free from the burden of chronological scrapbooking! As I sorted my pictures, I had lots of ideas for scrapbook pages. For example....I found that on each of our 4 trips to Disneyworld, we had many pictures taken in similar places. I want to make some pages showing those same spots, but on different trips.

My scrapbooking supplies are fairly organized and awaiting me......I have promised myself that I will not buy any more scrapbooking paper or accessories until I have almost used up all that I already have on hand!

Now, do any of you have a favorite brand of scrapbooking 12 x 12 album? I began with Creative Memories albums (I have 2 full ones), but I do not wish to use that type anymore. I also have one Close To My Heart album and 50 page protectors. I really like that album because you can make the pages and insert them in any order. I really like that feature. I want to buy 5 albums in 5 different colors (for my new system of scrapbooking)...do any of you have a product that you like better than the Close to My Heart? I looked at Pioneer scrapbooks, but they are available in only 4 colors.

Thanks for your ideas, and Happy Scrapbooking!