Enough is enough - the great declutter

missyg_3

Hehe - well I never find cheques! I'm always in such a rush to get them paid in, they don't sit around anywhere!

Ebaying has crept up to £51. I doubt I will get anything much done today, I'm not feeling 100%.

pigpen

Another 3 things listed on ebay .. there will be nothing left at this rate!! lol

mary43

Eeeekkkkk !!!!!!!!!!!! Just emerged before I got buried beneath a pile of photos..........I'm trying desparately hard to 'thin them out', get rid of the blurred ones and those where I chopped someones head off (not literally!).....doing well I think in that area.............Now, how to I organise them in some sort of order ?? Do I do it by year ??? Do I keep grandchildren separate ? (which I think might be easier).........start by taking out all piccys of grandchildren then put them in another album all to themselves.
How do other folk do it ? My floor is currently covered with albums and photos and I'm getting a headache !!
OH is no help ...........glued to something on tele

mags50_2

Hi Mary
I know this might seem lazy but what I did was... gather all the photo's together and just bunged them in albums wherever... I had lots of old invitations (christenings, weddings etc.) and letters (you name it, I keep it!) and just put them in with the photos as well. My original idea was to just get them out of the way and then put them in some sort of order when I had more time... but I never got round to it... my family often pick them up and have a look through...they don't mind that they aren't in any particular order... and often one little photo or letter can bring back so many memories.

I will get round to tidying them one day... I promise , but at the moment, they are up on the shelf, out of the way, and 'tidyish'.... and everyone knows where they are.

Hope this was a little bit of help x

melvis

It's my day off and although I have done general tidying (hoovering, washed dishes etc) I have not even attempted to declutter anything! I have no motivation today!

pigpen

Melvis.. come one.. one little drawer.. one skanky cardboard box...

I sold 2 things on ebay this afternoon.. so £40 in my paypal so far.. and another £38 still not finished.. Most finishes tomorrow I think.. Then I'll buy my fire for the middle room.. I am watching about 90 lol..

mary43

Thanks mags - I get the feeling thats while I'll be doing. This all started when my eldest son asked me to look out some photos of him so he could do his own little modern day 'family history'..............took me ages and had to get every single album out (and there's a lot !!) I started this afternoon taking photos out of the albums that are getting past their sell by date and just don't stick anymore...........so now, I've a pile of albums untouched, several piles of photos and a heap of rubbish to chuck out.............oh and one empty shelf which is where they're headed...................lol


I'd much rather be doing something nice.................lol

Craftyscholar

Mary, one thing to remember - put names on the back of photos.
I have a lot of old family photos (and cleared out more) but have no idea who a lot of the people are.
It's the one job my normally very organised mother never got round to and now I have no-one to ask.

missyg_3

Hi Mary lovely to see you posting on here again

When I sorted my photos I dropped them into plastic crates sorted roughly by "decade" - in my case 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s. Then I tackled each one at a time to thin them down, doing one crate a day to make sure I did them properly.

Oh blimey the clothes... the hairstyles... :eek:

They now fit all into one crate which is manageable and are still separated by decade - about a 10-20cm stack for each decade. I made the decision to just keep them like this - no scanning, no albums.

I had been keeping my pics of my son in albums since birth so they didn't need sorting, it was just everything else.

mary43

craftyscholar - I always date my photos and the place they were taken. The really old ones I've got I managed to get Mum to put names to for my family history file but she still has a box there with nothing on them at all. Her poor state of health now she's not able to tell me anything about them and there's no-one else to ask so I'll never know.

missyg - that sounds like a good idea.............decades...........like that one. I've tried to keep grandchildren separate but it didn''t seem to work and they just got added to album after album. I think my best plan is maybe to start with them...............take out all the grandchildrens photos and put them in an album all their own. Then the rest into decades.
But..........not today................been fun looking through them but I've had enough for now................lol They're going on the shelf so I can see the floor again.....................lol