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As a professional organizer, it’s common to come across countless boxes and manila envelopes full of old photographs in your clients’ homes. They are often lacking any organizational system, mixed together with no rhyme or reason. You might even come across strips of photo negatives and slides within those same boxes and envelopes.

In today’s digital world, most of us are storing photographs on our phones and computers—which means those disorganized photo prints are likely family memories from years ago and past generations. This makes them even more important, as they are cherished moments that aren’t stored anywhere digitally.

Depending on where they’ve been physically stored, such as attics and basements, they might already be degrading. Direct sunlight, moisture and humidity all compromise photographs, putting those memories at risk of being lost forever.

To preserve your clients’ treasured memories, let’s explore some tips for gathering up all those photos and making sure your client and their future generations can enjoy them forever.

Safety First

As an organizing professional, you know about safety—and surprisingly, organizing old photos is no exception.

Consider the environment in which those old family photos have been stored for years, some of which might have been passed down from older generations and therefore stored for decades. Basements and attics can be moldy, and you might find a thick layer of dust on the storage boxes.

Before you dig into the organization process, change into old clothes and wear a pair of latex gloves. You don’t want to make yourself sick or congested with allergens.

Photo Organization Tips

There are a number of different ways to organize a large volume of photos – by person, by place, by event, more broadly by siblings and cousins, or grouping memories by year.

While there is no “right” way to organize them, you’ll eventually need the assistance of your client since they will recognize people and places. Your job is to help them get started by making some sense of the photo stockpile. Here is a helpful method of tackling the task:

1. Group the photos, slides and negatives together.
2. In the photos pile, separate Polaroids from regular photo prints.
3. Organize them chronologically, as best you can based on photo quality.

To arrange them by date, first pull out all black & white photos, then move onto color photos that you can tell are decades old. Some hints would be dull colors, older furniture or carpet in the photos, dated hairstyles, and dated clothing. Finally, separate out photos that look like they are more recent, which would be those that have more vivid colors, more current background décor, and more modern clothing and hairstyles.

This is probably as far as you can go on your own. Store the separated photos in airtight containers to avoid any moisture or humidity, and hand them off to your client with instructions to further organize by family member, event, or estimated year.

Educate them about the “parking lot” method of organization, encouraging them to tackle one box at a time to minimize clutter, distraction and avoid becoming too overwhelmed.

Provide your client with Post-It® notes to identify their various stacks of photos as they’re organizing. Once a box is empty, they should move onto the next, but not until each photo from the previous box has been assigned to a designated category.

Discuss Next Steps with Your Client

Once the organization process has been completed, a long-term storage option needs to be evaluated and decided.

Today, we’re fortunate to have acid-free storage options that help preserve photos for longer. Consider purchasing acid-free photo storage sleeves for each category, then place multiple categories into acid-free, archival quality boxes.

However, it’s important to understand that any long-term storage option won’t preserve your memories forever. You still run the risk of them degrading over time.

Digitize Preservation

The modern-day way to preserve your clients’ memories forever is to digitize them. This is the only guaranteed way to ensure their treasured family memories will be successfully passed down from the current generation to the next. Plus, it eliminates clutter—which is every organizer’s ultimate goal.

Digitizing memories simply requires sourcing a company with expertise in this area, sending the originals in, and receiving cloud-based access to them after digitizing. This will allow your client to view them on any device, share with family and friends anywhere, and continue to add to them for years to come.

One such company is iMemories, which is a best-in-class photo digitization company that can be added to your organizational resources for clients with a high volume of physical media. They are the most trusted in the industry due to the fact that they have never lost or damaged a single memory after 15 years of business.

With their Apple and Android apps, your clients can let their memories come streaming back on any device, as easily as pulling up Netflix. If they want a hard copy as well, they can even order their memories on DVD or USB thumb drive—swapping all those cumbersome boxes and manila envelopes with a small DVD or USB that can be stored in a desk drawer.

Regardless of the way your client chooses to store their photos after they’re organized, make sure you encourage them to act quickly. Photos degrade over time, and many of their photos have likely already been stored away for years. Encourage them to digitize so those family photos are preserved and easily-accessible for future generations.