Tag: photo organization

Week 5, Day 6: More Photos

Donna Joy

One of the things I was looking forward to in this journey was gaining more of an awareness of what I have. It is so easy for me to live disconnected in so many areas – I don’t grow my own food, I don’t make my own clothes, life is increasingly virtual – especially this past year. The act of going through my possessions is bringing a level of awareness of what I own but it is also breaking through disconnection in other ways.

Going through my photos forces me to see what I have in a different way. It reminds me of the variety of experiences I’ve been able to have, from the births of my children, to bowling with friends on a random trip to Illinois; Singing in choirs from churches to Carnegie Hall to more outdoor adventures than I could remember; weddings, funerals, parties and memorials. It reminds me of relationships that have spanned decades and relationships that have come and gone, or changed significantly. It reminds me of the thoughts I had at the very beginning of this blog:

“The transformation from dust and to dust is not limited to just our literal birth and death, it is found in every season of our lives. In every season there are cycles of creation, dust, waiting and re-creation.”

Some photos were reminders of the dust, some were reminders of the cycles of creation I see in my relationships. I loved reaching out to a few friends and family members this week, sharing with them some of the little memories I found. I loved sitting with my child at the end of a long day, reminiscing and laughing at old school journals and projects.

And I love that there is still room my photo boxes. There are seasons of recreation still to come, and more photos to be taken.

Image Contents: A throw-back photo of the author and her favorite childhood dog (a Great Dane), posing like horse and jockey.

Week 5, Day 5: Photos

Donna Joy

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Today I continued sentimental. I could do a month in this category alone.

While there are numerous other things I could round out the week with, I decided to face my photos. 

I’m old enough to have lived through disposable cameras, 35mm film, and the Official Scrapbooking Parties where you paid money for a salesperson to teach you the only way to respect your loved ones is to buy all of the salesperson’s official Acid Free photo paper, albums, stickers, markers, pens, scissors, trimmers, protectors and other accessories and write a scrapbook novel highlighting the incredibly special photos in each sleeve of pictures you picked up at the one-hour photo center.

And I have photos from all of those periods.

Including photos from at least 2 of those parties. 

And let’s face it.  If my donation sale was stocked in part by all the crafts I realized I will never have time to master or even attempt well, I can be pretty stinking sure I am not scrapbooking the photos from my junior high youth group game night anytime soon. (Confession: my mind just designed a horrifying scrapbook for it anyway, complete with a hypercolor cover, neon paper and photos held in place by aqua-net super hold. Long live the 80s and may it rest in peace and never return.) (Another confession: I actually went to jr. high and high school mostly in the 90s, but aqua net hairspray takes a long time to wash out of your life.)

ANYWAY, I approached photos today in the strength of knowing I did not need to make this a craft project. I also did not need to feel shame about how disorganized they are, or guilt for not having done anything with them earlier beyond tossing photos in photo boxes, sometimes randomly. Life can be hard and for me, in-depth photo organization is one thing I don’t really regret letting go. 

I kept my process SUPER simple, because anything more and I would be overwhelmed and not have the capacity to complete it.

I got out my trusty post-its (I decluttered a lot of them a few weeks ago, but kept a few different sizes and colors because those things make every project better and I love them) and set labels out in front of me: one for each of my 3 children alone, one for friends, extended family, etc. 

One by one I pulled photo boxes down from their shelf and sorted the photos into those piles. 

Every few photos, my old voices would try to interrupt: Shouldn’t you be organizing this by date? I can’t believe you haven’t labelled every picture. What if you die and no one knows if this photo is son 1 or son 2? Wait, is that son 1 or son 2? Wow, you’re a really bad mom. and photo organizer. 

Over and over I shushed the shame and reminded myself that anything I do today is better than it was yesterday. I got through about half my photos boxes today. For that group, I now know what photos I have. I know where to look if there’s a photo I want to show someone or use for something. 

And for today, that is enough.

Oh, and I also know I no longer need to store precious gems like this double vision photo. buh-bye.