Tags
memories, negatives, past, photos, sorting, spring cleaning, throwing out
The other day my sister gave me a big green box filled with photos and negatives I had left at hers when I moved over to Ireland many, many years ago. Once upon a time the box had been organised and sorted but now it was a jumble of places and people.
So yesterday I took the time to sort through the photos. I didn’t want to keep them all so I decided to only keep those that fit into all of three categories:
- I could remember the name of the person(s) /place
- the image was not blurred or otherwise unpleasing
- I thought I would look at it again
I was amazed how many photos landed on the ‘to-throw-out’ pile. Many were because I really didn’t remember the name of the people in them, faces of people I spent short amounts of time with but who had dropped out of my life, or I out of theirs. Even more of the photos where of places that I couldn’t quite identify so out they went too. And then of course there were lots of photos that where just not great, too light, to dark, blurred, off center or ‘what was I thinking’ bad.
The third time I went through the photos I sorted out all of the ones I knew I would never look at again, really how many photos do I need of the same thing? So two out of three went into the bin. After all I was keeping most of the negatives (although a good few of unidentifiable blobs did have to go too) so I can always reproduce if need be.
After I had sorted through my past a small stack of photos and an envelope filled with negatives was left and somehow it felt like I had spring cleaned my memories, freeing up space for new ones, good, forgettable and maybe even blurred.
jensinewall 
Your story reminds me of cleaning out my mother’s photos after she died. I did the first cut into piles — keep, don’t know who, and out. My brother then went through them all. Sometimes he could put a name to a face I couldn’t but it was an old neighbor and we didn’t keep the photo anyway. Most of the photos were of poor quality compared to today but it’s all we have. We whittled down the boxes to a small shoebox of meaningful memories. Then we duplicated anything we both wanted. I have encouraged my husband, who had thousands of slides of his kids to go through, clean out and store on a memory stick the ones that are worthy. Then he can duplicate for each child. It’s a tough job and like you said, there is such a sense of spring cleaning about the whole project.
I so agree … And who knows in a few years I may even remember less 😉
I need to do the same thing.. Hi Jensine. It’s been awhile since I’ve been blogging much.. only occasionally but trying to get back slowly but surely. Hope you are well… Diane
I’m in Germany working on my novel for my masters in creative writing … Internet is patchy so j haven’t been able to blog much … But getting writing done, sort of
Have you moved there or just temporarily…. ? Diane
Just got the summer … Rented out my place in Dublin to save money and spend time writing