Tuesday, February 26, 2013

A Photo Album Warning!

 
The blog has been pretty quiet because I've been obsessed with removing pictures from old photo albums and placing them in acid-free albums.  Back in the 70's and 80's, they came out with these self adhesive photo albums and I had put all my photos I had taken in the 70's and some in the 80's in these types of albums.

It was a huge mistake. When we had our sprinkler system problem and the basement was sprayed with water, it sprayed onto these albums.  As I dried them off and looked inside for the first time in years, I noticed that quite a few of the photos had faded.  I tried to remove a picture from a page and it was glued tight to the page.  Now, they photos had been placed in the album in 1976 but I had thought they were safe.  I  WAS WRONG.

I ordered a bunch of acid-free photo albums and have spent the last two months removing what I could from the self adhesive albums and placing them in the new albums.  It's been a mess.  A lot of the photos I was unable to retrieve or they were too faded to save. 

I also had boxes and boxes of photos still in the envelopes from the developer.  So since I was already deep into this mission, I organized these photos and also placed them in acid-free albums.  I had no idea when I started what a huge job this would be and how much time it would take.

I also divided the pictures into three piles: Rocketman and me, Laura and Luke.  I put the photos into each pile and then put the photos into albums.  I did this to make it easier on the kids when we are gone.  I have albums, marked with their names, and it will make it very easy to divide up the pictures. I've done it for them already.

So if you have any of those old photo albums, please consider switching to a different photo album that doesn't use that adhesive backing.  I don't know how bad it would have been if I had waited a couple more decades to do this.

Now, I think about all the photos on the computer.  We got our first digital camera in 2002 or 2003 and I want prints made out of all those digital photos.  We are talking thousands of photos.  I haven't started that project yet because quite frankly, I am still recovering from this one.  But you may ask, why would you want to do that?  I'm the kind of girl that likes to sit with a big photo album and look and pictures page by page not on a computer screen.  I also think, "what will happen with this digital photos when I'm gone?" I may start this project one year at a time.  Also, I have no idea how much it will cost to have the photos printed by someone.  I also need to find a better place to store all these photos safely too.  Oy!

1 comment:

  1. I recommend sorting digitally and making a disk for each child. if you must print, costco is like 6 cents each!

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