Spring Cleaning: Photo Prints

This spring I am all about organizing and cleaning!

Well trying to be.

I decided to start with something small: my little photograph box. I don't have gobs of photo prints but they needed a go-through. I came home from work, put on some comfy clothes and good music, and then began sorting.

Previously they were all stored in a photo box and held up with plastic grocery bags for a good 8-10 years. I don't think the photo box was acid free and I could feel that the grocery bags were starting to deteriorate. I needed to organize and find another storage solution if only to protect my pictures.

Here is my sorting/purging before and after,

Before                                                After

I got rid of a good 2 inch stack of pictures and reorganized the remaining by year.

I have come to realize that the most important pictures were of the people I really care about. I don't really need tons of pictures of strangers in costume or pictures of objects (those are cool, but I don't really want a physical photograph of them- I can keep the digital copy).

Then it was time to find another way to store them. I contemplated photo albums but they really take up a lot of shelf space and I don't find myself going through pictures enough to justify the expense/space hog.

Then I found these little acid free plastic photo containers at the craft store in the scrap booking section,

Plastic photo boxes

They were on sale for 40% off and then I had a 20% off coupon I could stack with it. I got 5 of them total for about $10.

I'm currently on the hunt for a decorative box to put them in since they are just a little too high to fit in a standard photo box. Right now I have them in my big memorabilia box. Still, I think this will work for now! I figure if I ever change systems, these boxes will work great for small craft supplies.

First project done, way more to go!