Safely Store Your Photos

Photo Safety

Your first step should be to get the photos into a photo-safe box.   Believe it or not there are actually international standards for things to be considered "photo-safe".  Photo-safe materials should have a lab tested pH between 7.0 and 9.5, so that acid does not damage your photographs over time.  Lignin is what turns paper brown and brittle.  It occurs naturally in wood pulp, so there is always some degree of lignin in paper.  To be considered "lignin-free", paper has to have lignin content of less than one percent.  Creative Memories sells a whole "Power Sort System" that helps you organize and store your photos and memorablia safely.  After you get your photos organized, start scrapbooking (in photo-safe scrapbooks, of course!).

Photo Storage

The longer your photos stay in the old shoe boxes and developing envelopes, the more damaged they become.  If you do anything with your old pictures, put them in photo-safe storage boxes.  I use the Creative Memories Power Sort Boxes.  They are made of photo-safe plastic and are black, so that light does damage my stored photos.  It hold up to 2,400 photos (up to 5x7's) in 12 removable compartments.  The removable compartments are key for shuffling the groups of photos around as you organize.  Also, you can take out one compartment at a time as you scrapbook, to save space.  There are dividers that you can write on to help with sorting and organizing your photos.  If you write on the dividers in pencil, you can erase and reuse them as you scrapbook.

Organizing  My Power Sort Boxes are generally organized by date.  Within some of the year sections, I have labeled dividers of special occasions (vacations, birthdays, holidays, etc.).  I have a separate box for my wedding photos and memorabilia.  I also have a separate box for photos from our 3 week trip to Japan.  Some people organize their boxes by vacations, children/grandchildren, holidays, and pets.  There's no right way to organize, just do what makes sense to you.

Digital Pictures

As a side note, don't forget to have your digital pictures backed-up on another drive or burned onto cd's.  My father-in-law's hard drive recently crashed and he lost all his digital pictures, including hundreds of old pictures that he spent hours scanning to eventually burn onto cd's.  One of my friends takes her back-up cd's to work.  She says, "What are the chances that your house and office will burn down or get broken into at the same time?".  She has a point!!