There are a lot of decisions to be made when downsizing and putting your house on the market.  Emotions obviously range from excitement to dread; from denial to staunch determination.  And that is only about the “things” and doesn’t touch the emotions involved with family, friends, memories or even familiarity.

For me, the most emotionally and decision intensive part so far is the photographs! Not to mention this is a HUGE time investment for those of us who have lived through the printed picture age.

This is actually a sampling of the photos we have!

I guess I was too busy enjoying and photographing my kids and family to take the time to organize all those photos when they were developed.  As a result, I have hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pictures to work through.

First I am sorting the photos by year, and next I am culling the duplicates and triplicates ~ after all, I had two sets of grandparents to send photos!

But culling duplicates isn’t as easy as you may think because some of said photos actually ended up in photo albums! This throws me into the dilemma of, “wait, did I just see that picture or do I remember it from a photo album?” (Which happens to already be in the storage unit.)

This box isn’t ALL discarded photos, but…

When I finally finish sorting and culling duplicates, I plan on having all the remaining paper photos scanned so the colors won’t continue to fade and I will have access to them on my computer.

But alas, scanning is also a process! Recently I had our old videos converted from cassette tapes to flash drives and for the same price I could have bought something pretty awesome for our boat!

So now I am researching my options for scanning services and weighing the cost against heading to the nearest Target or CVS, pulling up a lawn chair and scanning the photos myself.

I have a feeling the cost of professional scanning will seem significantly more reasonable when I calculate how many hours I will have to stand in a local store to scan those photos myself. The price will seem especially reasonable when I consider that the time I spend at a photo kiosk could be spent sorting, donating and selling household goods.

Soooo many times I thought all those friends who spent weekends “scrapbooking” were wasting their time. Well, I guess they are laughing now?

Oh, the fun of downsizing continues!!

If anyone reading this, like me, was too busy (read disorganized) to cull and sort photos along the way, I strongly suggest you tackle your photos WAY before you begin the actual downsizing process!

If you are anything like me, you will need a LOT of time for this process!