Finding Some Fun Things While Sorting Through My Dads Boxes

I started sorting through my dad's boxes today. I went through two boxes of pictures and negatives today. I got some wonderful surprises while sorting through those two boxes. 

I sorted out the pictures into piles., pictures of my dad, his wife, them together, extended family and siblings photos. There were a few other odd pictures, but for the most part, they all fell into those categories. I also pulled out all the photos that didn't have someone in them. 

When I was sorting my mothers stuff, I sorted out all the pictures that didn't have people in them and then also pulled out the ones that had people in them that we didn't know. If you type in "picture sorting" into the search at the bottom of the home page, many posts will come up because I have done this so many times. I can't believe how many pictures I have gone through in my lifetime and I am no where near done. Here is a link to one of those posts. 

Just last week, I took pictures off my fathers current computer, three older computers / laptops, two large back up drives, lots of back up cd's and about 20+ usb drives. Once I got them all onto one larger back up drive, I spent a day sorting and organizing them by trip, date, event, and people. 

I'll share how I did my back up drive. I usually sort by year first, giving the full year. I then put month, sometimes day, and year and then type in the event, trip, or person. I tried several ways to sort pictures in the past and have found this one to be the best and most organized and easy to use.

At the end of the dated material, I will have subjects like, "Pictures of friends" or "Good pictures of mom and dad" type of things. There are always times when you need a good picture for something so I will usually pull out good pictures into a file while going through all the pictures anyway so that they can find them quickly if needed. So, It would look something like this:

2012 3-2-12 Easter Camping with family S. D.
2018 12-24-18 Christ. Eve Dinner with extended family 
Good pictures of Uncle John
Favorite pictures of Each Kid * Then I would have sub folders with each kids name. 

When I am sorting printed photos, I put them by person, then sort that person by age starting with youngest to oldest. I then scan the photos in order so that when I am looking for a specific picture, I can go right to that person and quickly scan for the age I am looking for. 

I sort family pictures together if more than one person is in the picture, and sort them by date as best I can. I then scan them in order of date and event, and then I can share them digitally with everyone in the pictures. I use Facebook to share pictures with cousins and other relations. I also do this with friends. I will make a group for specific family members so I can share bulk pictures there, but if I have a few of this person or that, I will just send them through messenger on Facebook. Sometimes people may not want the pictures public so messenger is a way to share them with the person but not make them public. 

I still have lots of boxes of things to go with more pictures that are older in age and more family history type pictures, but I was happy with the fun pictures I found today. One is Princess Three at the sand dunes as a baby. 

The other picture is Princess One in my arms and Princess Three on my back as I hiked her in on my back to an arch for a few miles many years ago. 

Of course, while sorting, I found a double rainbow picture. I shared yesterday that I have been seeing lots of 111 signs and coins, but I know my mother was helping me find all the things I needed to find to be able to finish her history and my dad had many things that will be helpful in finishing my mothers history and book. I smiled when I found this rainbow picture as I always seem to see rainbows when remembering my mother or when she is near. Here is a link about that. 

I am excited to get through a few more boxes tomorrow, and hope to get through them all and start scanning next week. I would love to get my dads stuff done so that I can get to my mothers as I stopped mid work on my mothers a few years back and never picked it up again. One of my girls rooms has become a work room for the project and I would like to get it cleaned out and make it more inviting for the girls to come home and not having totes of family history everywhere. 

I don't want to store this stuff any longer than needed. It will be nice to have everything digital and share a back up drive with each family member and finish it all up. 

Have a Blessed and memory filled day!