Follow These Three Easy Steps to Preserve Your Family Photos
You have family pictures—lots of them, an uncountable amount of prints, slides, negatives, videos—and you are overwhelmed by them. You know you should sort through them but there are so many you don’t know how to start. Since you don’t have time to deal with them right now, you leave them in a dusty box in the basement and feel guilty.
Stop feeling guilty and handle the most important thing right now: the protection of your photos.
Leaks, dust, mold, mildew, mice, hurricanes, floods — there are so many ways your photos can be ruined. Follow these three quick and easy steps to protect your pictures and alleviate your guilt until you’re ready to take the time to sort, organize, and display them.
1. Move the boxes out of the attic, basement, or garage and into your house
Photographic images of all types should be kept in a dark location with a stable humidity and temperature since essentially they like to live where you do, but in the dark. A perfect spot would be a closet inside the house, away from bathroom or laundry pipes.
Photos in baggies. You don’t have to organize them this thoroughly when you’re just trying to preserve them!
Photos in baggies. You don’t have to organize them this thoroughly when you’re just trying to preserve them!
2. Put them into big, clean, clear, resealable baggies and boxes
If you have loose photo prints or slides, put them in clear plastic bags (nothing fancy — a clean, clear zip-top bag will do), close the bag (leave some air in) and stack the bags carefully on top of each other in a clear plastic box with a lid. This will keep things flat and protected from water damage.
Photo albums are typically best left intact as they protect the photos from light and keep them flat. Securely stacking albums together should be fine. Video tapes should also be fine if securely stacked. If you want, you can slide them both into bags for extra protection.
Regardless of whether or not you put albums and video tapes into bags, make sure to put everything into plastic boxes with lids.
3. Store them off the floor
The hardest thing to come back from is water damage. And where does water like to pool? The floor. Avoid the whole ordeal of dealing with water-damaged photos by putting your boxes of photos on the top shelf of a closet or on a table.
How easy was that! You should be guilt-free now. You don’t have to worry about your photos being damaged while they wait for you to organize them.