Hang On A Bit, Marie

[poliphilo]

On the subject of family photographs Marie Kondo says that you should weed out all the ones you think unlikely to interest your kids- and bin them.

And I say the kids can make their own selection. Why should I pre-empt them?

There's this to be considered too- that photographs grow in value as social documents the longer you keep them. My grandparents' Victorian, Edwardian and early Georgian albums fascinate me. I may not care too much about my parents' pictures of holidays they took in the 1990s but my great-grandchildren may well find them wonderfully quaint.

Comments

[oakmouse]

Marie Kondo is wrong like a very wrong thing. If my mother had done as she advises, we'd have lost treasures.

Let the kids decide what they do and don't want, preferably before you die.

And yes, label the photos on the back!

[poliphilo]

I labelled my way through a big box of photos shortly after my father died, but there's a lot more to do.

[oakmouse]

My mother didn't label much of anything, and the pictures from before her time that were labeled mostly had nicknames on them, or names of British relatives that nobody in my generation knew. Or they were labeled in ink that has turned sepia, in tiny cramped writing none of us can decipher. But maybe 3 or 4% of the family photos are labeled at all in any way. When my sister L comes to visit later this year we're going to have a grand go-through of hers and mine and see what we can sort out.