Tips for purging and storing photos, artwork and paper mementos.
Purging family keepsakes, photos and children's artwork can be SO overwhelming.
As with any major decluttering project I take on, the process of sorting through and organizing these mementos took a lot of time!
From start to finish, it took me NINE months to complete the process of going through all of our most treasured photos and paper memorabilia.
I learned a lot through the process and wanted to share some tips with you. 🙂
I decided I wanted to store everything all together when I was done. The bookcases I built in our basement have provided a ton of storage for us.
I knew this was the perfect spot!:
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I still had plenty of room, so one of those cabinets is now a storage spot all of our family photos and stuff from our kids' childhoods.
I had five main "paper" items to sort through and store:
- Small photos — we had eight photos boxes FULL.
- Medium to large photos — things like school and family photos. Some of my old family photos (some nearly 100 years old!!) are HUGE, and I wanted to find a way to enjoy them but keep them protected.
- Kids' schoolwork — PILES of school projects ranging from tiny to huge.
- Mementos from our childhoods, travel and school like report cards, music programs and ticket stubs.
- Greeting cards — more on that in a minute!
My first step was to go through everything to decide what to keep.
The key word there is KEEP — one of my favorite parts about the Konmari decluttering method I've used for years is that it teaches you to hold on to items you cherish, instead of trying to decide what you want to give up.
There is a difference, and I find keeping items I LOVE so much easier than deciding what needs to go.
If I don't love something, I no longer feel guilty donating it. And if I LOVE it, I no longer feel guilty for keeping it, no matter how silly it may seem. It really is freeing to purge the clutter this way!
Step one: The photos
My first part of this project was sorting through thousands of photos. It took me a loooong time to do this.
Family photos and a small box of items are the only things from my childhood that my Mom was able save from move to move…so I cherish those photographs.
Because of that, a few years ago I would have felt bad about tossing ANY photos.
- I've learned if I don't know the person in a picture and the people in my life who do (say, my Dad), don't want the photos…I can toss them.
- I can toss blurry photos I took from the bus windows on Girl Scout and school field trips. 🙂
- I can also throw away doubles from all of the rolls of film I took in middle and high school. (I did text some to friends to see if they wanted them.)
It was SUCH a great feeling to toss a ton of the photos that were cluttering up the ones I wanted to enjoy. I whittled the photos down from eight boxes to five.
I use these simple cardboard photo boxes and my last set held up for ten years!:
