Thank you all - I think I'm going to use the Iris cases for the photos that are coming out of the albums for now (DH apparently has a couple sitting around empty - not sure what he bought them for but I've re-purposed them for him) but will probably buy photo boxes for the larger bulk of them.
And then when I get around to figuring out what'll be scrapped, what'll be turned into photo books (and of those, which I want to actually KEEP the originals vs toss), and what'll just be tossed or kept - then hopefully the Iris cases will end up being useful there also.
This is a long-term project for sure.
This sounds familiar to a project (long dreaded) I did last fall. I had 3 large totes of photos/albums. I'm a long time scrapbooker, and so of course I ordered the photo in black and white, sepia, light glare, fake snow and 4 different sizes because you never how what size you need!! LOL I started out wanting to get down to one 700lb tote lol
I didn't buy a ton of them.... I did buy the 5X7 ones because I had a ton of 5X7's.
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010RAT0TE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1Stage 1) I first sorted with what stage of life my kid was in (or prekid!) into the photo boxes I already had.
Stage 2) I ended up sticking with chronological, (but it took me a bit to figure it out!) I started out by roughly trying to narrow it down by year, and putting like photos in the case with others like it (like all Christmas) or a specific vacation we tend to take every year, start of school whatever. It was SO helpful being able to see through the case in putting them in chronological order!!
Stage 3) I chose to only work one year at a time. I separated them out the best I could within the Iris cases. I found that 2 sets of 6 cases was plenty. Then, I went through and was brutal about what I kept (I have electronic of most, and had lots of duplicates etc) For example, I didn't keep a 5X7 and a 4x6- I'd pitch the 4X6. This allowed me to reduce the actual number, by ALOT. I also had a couple envelopes close by to put dupes and stuff in for other people.
Stage 4) I used post it flags (certain color for certain people) and also chose a color to write locations or other things like kindergarten graduation on. As I worked, I'd stick those on the Iris case to help with cataloging.
Stage 5) I would have had a photo processing envelope (or 20) empty from that years worth of photos, and I'd take the ones in the Iris cases out, stack in chronological order (ideally the stack would be small enough to fit in one or two cases), put the stack into a paper envelope, label it, along with my post it note flags and put it aside, allowing me to use my Iris cases again.
Stage 1) Start again with the next year.
In my case.. I did this about 20 times lol
But, in the end, when I was done using the Iris cases to sort, I then had distilled most of the years photos down to one Iris box worth, and so all of 2005 resides in one of the little boxes and so on. I also kept another one for things I wanted to scrap (I also keep some memory cards in that box, and there is another one, lol that is for randomness that I couldn't place, but wanted to keep.
I cannot say enough how awesome it was to be able to SEE into the boxes at a glance, or stick a post it flag on the box while sorting. Sounds silly but way more visible and both sticks better/more removable than on paper!!
Without doing it in stages, it would have cost me about triple to have enough boxes to truly start my project, and I'd have had a ton left over taking up space when I was done. Plus, it's just too much to mentally try to remember if you already saw or kept a photo etc.
Also, I used these to store the larger prints
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ED3SUA2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001AJGYZA/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I still need to go through and put them in a better order, but I did use the little post it flags, again, outside of the sleeves to put any information that would be easy to forget, especially year! Some day maybe I'll get around to it!!
Oh! So those 3 massive totes got distilled down to two of the 5X7 6 packs of Iris containers one of the 4X6 containers like you linked, 1 11X14 portfolio (damn those photo packages in the early 2000's!!) and 2 8X10 portfolios. Not even a full totes worth. And it's labeled and in order. Feels great!!
Good luck!!
