A PHOTO SOLUTION FOR GRANDPARENTS

                                                                                     

Help! I’ve accumulated storage boxes full of photos, drawers of photos taken out of photo albums that had the wrong kind of paper, and a computer storing several years of photographs. To top it off, I recently inherited all of my mother’s old photograph albums. Talk about overwhelmed, I had dreams I was literally buried alive in photos. As a grandmother who is in her 70s, time demands I do something quickly!

As I sat leafing through my mother’s albums and removing old pictures to return to my sisters and other family members, I searched for a solution to my problem. I knew that my scrapbooking could no longer be tossed aside with my age old promise, “I’ll do it later.” I had arrived at later. But it wasn’t until I put together a scrapbook of memories for one of my grandchildren, who was graduating from high school, that I hit upon the solution. I would make a scrapbook for each of my grandchildren with all the photos of memories that my husband and I had shared with them. It would include their birth and up to the present. If they were married and had children, it would include their children, our great-grandchildren. I would give the albums to them as I finished. This would do away with someone having to sort through my pictures boxes, or taking them out of albums and returning them to the right family. Heaven forbid that someone would consider throwing them away. I had already made such an album for our two children.

Now, I don’t have all the answers and if you’re a real scrapbooking pro, you probably won’t want to do it my way. Because I have mountains of pictures, I chose simple and easy. I bought a nice three-ring binder 8 x 10 inch size, a box of 100 sheet page protectors, scrapbook paper, and set to work. Pictures may be arranged simply on your choice of paper, slipped in the page protector, and added to the album. This allows you to move the pages around so you can arrange them as near as you can by year. I’m not finished yet, but I’m well on my way.

But--where and how do you begin? This is the way I chose to handle the project.

First, I went through all the picture folders on my computer. I uploaded the grandchild’s pictures to an online photo company such as Shutterfly or Snapfish. I looked for bargains which they periodically run. Let me tell you going through the picture folders can take three or four hours, but you will have accomplished a lot. I chose to work on one grandchild at a time because of time, cost, and the amount of pictures. The younger the grandchild, the more pictures I had online. These could have been put in photo books, but because of my age, I had a mix of prints in boxes, and photos online. I wanted one complete album of the child’s life, so chose to have prints made. You younger grandparents would be wise to make the photo books as they grow.

Next, I started sorting my boxes and drawers of pictures. I decided I only wanted to do that once. So, I bought manila 8 x 10 envelopes and labeled them with each of my grandchildren’s names. As I ran across their picture, I laid it on top of their envelope. I have nine grandchildren, so when I finished each box, I had sorted all the pictures out. Of course, there are pictures that are a mix of family and don’t necessarily go with a particular grandchild. These can go in a separate scrapbook, or you can box them, or include some family scenes with each grandchild’s album.

The final step is to scrapbook the pictures and put together a picture book of your grandchild’s life. They will be thrilled with their story, and you can rest assured the pictures are in the right person’s hands.