Where do you put your photos?

I’m a procrastinator. A big time procrastinator. For years I’ve had a huge tote of photos going all the way back to the bad hairstyle days of jr. high. I had tons of photos from high school and my college days all the way up to spring of 2007 when I decided to get one of them thar digital cameras. This was a tote of organizational hell. Nothing was in order, there were a bajillion negatives just tossed in there, there were duplicates and there were photos that weren’t even that good that could be tossed.

When I was pregnant with Joe and before we moved, I went on an organizational rampage of my photos. I managed to get pictures paired with their duplicates and everything sorted into categories of years, then sub categories. For example, the year I graduated high school, 2003, I had many sub categories of prom, graduation, state music contest, track, etc.

The next step was to get these photos in chronological order and put into albums. Then I needed to start printing off pictures starting from spring 2007. The end was somewhat in sight.

Then we moved and I had a baby. I lost a few months in there in my quest to organize my photos.

For Christmas my mother got me a great gift. She got me a box full of albums and a gift card to get my photos printed from Wal-Mart.com. (I already had all my digital photos uploaded there in case my computer crashed someday.) That gave me the motivation to start back on my photo organizing journey.

I’m very OCD when it comes to photo album arrangements. I want it as close as possible to chronological order. I would be pouring through my old journals and diaries and calling my mom to look in her journal to see when a certain event was. I was driving my mom nuts. I’d call her and ask, “Did we go to the pumpkin patch before or after your birthday?” It didn’t really matter- they were both in October, but I needed it to be just right. I even like to have the photos of a particular event in a certain order to kind of tell a story. That OCD-ness added a lot of time to the task.

Fast forward a couple of months and I’m proud to say that I’ve made great strides in my photo-archiving adventure. I’m caught up to 2010! That’s pretty good for me!

However, as I’m getting closer and closer to getting caught up, I’m wondering how I should continue to archive my photos. I didn’t really think anything of it until I read this article titled Photo Albums are Dead to Us on Babycenter.com.

I am a photo album freak. I could look at my mom’s old albums all the time. Not only do I enjoy seeing how much the person in the photo has changed, the bad hair and the funky outfits, but I also like looking at the background. I might be a weirdo, but I like seeing what old Pepsi cans looked like or to see what furniture we used to have. There are little things in the background that can bring back a lot of memories. In one photo of me as a six year old you can see brown metal can in the background. I remember there was a bunch of cotton loom loops and a loom to make potholders that I played with all the time. In another picture you can see a toy I used to play with or a book I used to read in the background. I don’t think I would have remembered these special items unless I had seen them in the photo.

Photographs from when I was a child, even into high school are special. We didn’t have digital cameras back then. What was developed was what you got- there was no snapping 20 pictures to get the best one of the baby smashing a birthday cake. There are many special photographs that I cherish. There are photos of my grandfather who passed away before I was two years old holding me. What I like about having this tangible photograph is that I can scan it to make copies or put it in a frame.

I’m rather fond of photographs and photo albums. My mother-in-law found it quite amusing how I would pour over their old photo albums. I love seeing Ryan grow up and what their house used to look like.

But there are other ways of storing photos besides photo albums. Here is my personal pro/con list of each the ways I’ve considered archiving my photos.

Scrapbooking Pros

• They are pretty. You can put your own personal touch into the scrapbook. You can decorate it with themes, colors- the possibilities are endless!
  
• You can add detailed descriptions to the photos. Where the photo was taken, who is in the photo, special memories, etc.
• You can add other special mementos to the scrapbook besides photos. Ticket stubs, recital programs, children's artwork... you get the idea

Scrapbooking Cons

• It can get pretty time consuming. Considering it took me nearly 10 years to get my high school photos in an album, I doubt I would have enough time fit in scrapbooking due to my procrastination disease.
• It can get pretty costly.
  
• I'm a perfectionist, and I can see scrapbooking becoming a frustrating hobby. I'd want everything to look just right. I can see myself getting frustrated if I couldn't get my creative juices flowing to get a pretty page.
• I stated before that I like to see the background in photos. 20 years from now I might look back and see a photo with my laptop and think, "Oh my, look at that giant thing!" With scrapbooking there is a lot of cropping to get the photos to fit so the background is lost.
  
• Years from now my son might want a copy of a picture of him and his daddy playing baseball, but it would be hard to get him a copy if it's cropped and is stuck to a page.
  

Photo Book Pros:

• These are also really pretty. I think they look really sharp and professional compared to scrapbooking. You can get a photo printed right on the cover to make it all snazzy looking.
  
• They are quicker to put together than scrapbooking. You don't have to have die cuts or special scissors or fancy paper. Photo books have all that in whatever program you are using.
  
• Many times there are already templates made out so you don't have to spend a lot of time getting creative.
• Usually are much slimmer than photo albums or scrapbooks and take up less room.
  

Photo Book Cons:

• These can get really pricey. Especially if you have a lot of photos to put into one.
  
• Creativity can still be frustrating. Plus, you are working with technology which can cause even MORE frustrations.
• You'll never be quite sure what the finished product will look like. Something might look good on the screen but when you see it in person it can be quite disappointing.
  
• One thing I like about scrapbooking is writing in your own handwriting the descriptions to the photos. My mom scrapbooks and her grandchildren and great grandchildren can look back and see her own handwriting. I think that is special. With photobooks you can use fancy fonts, but it isn't quite the same as personal handwriting.
• Like I said with scrapbooking- It would be hard to get a copy of a certain photo in the future. Cropping the whole photo would still be a problem for me, the weirdo background-lover.
  

Photo Album Pros

• Easy to put together
• Doesn't require a lot of hard work
• You can take a photo out to make a copy or to give away in the future.
• The whole photo is intact
• Even though it costs money to get them printed either at a retail store or at home, it's cheaper than scrapbooking or photobooking.

Photo Album Cons

• They're boring. Yeah, you can get a cute photo album, but the inside with just the pictures is blah.
• There isn't a lot of room to write descriptions. I always buy albums where you can write right next to the photo, but sometimes there is a lot to describe and there's only five lines!
• Albums take up a lot of space. As the years go on it the collection just gets bigger and bigger!
  
• I can get carried away on how many pictures I print. I don't print every single one but I can still go crazy when I'm printing them. I have them all backed up on a hard drive and will convert them to CD's. However, if I had a limited space of a photo book or a scrapbook I might not be as keen to get a ton of pictures.
  

I still have some catching up to do so I don't know which route I'll take. Maybe it will be a mixture of all three. And who knows, maybe when we have 8 children I won't have time to do ANY of these three!

So here's the question for you: How do you archive your photographs? Do you have any other creative ideas to store your photos?