How have you stored your old printed pictures?

I keep my photos in a big plastic, mostly air-tight box. Some date back to the 40s, photos my mom gave me. The rest are from the 50s through 90s. They’re still holding up.

Maybe I’ll start an absum one of these days. Yeah… maybe.

I have none of them in those crappy sticky photo albums. I have the majority of them in plastic boxes.

I used to work in an Archive so I am more knowledgeable than most about photos.

We used to tell people if they put their family photos (or any treasured photos) in frames, to have a duplicate in a box somewhere because the ones in frames will fade when exposed to sunlight and light in the room. Also, if you have treasured photos, have duplicates with relatives because if your house ever burns down or you experience a flood or something, and your copies get ruined, at least there will be copies elsewhere.

We use the photo albums with the sealed plastic pockets and keep them out of the sun. Or laminate them so nothing can get to them. I had the pleasure of reaching through 3 feet of flood waters to rescue my SIL’s wedding album in one of our floods. We got the pictures out of the album and dried out ASAP and they were mostly salvageable, but don’t put your pics in the basement.

For years I kept meticulous photo albums for the kids. Then I had manilla folders labelled “the 80’s”, “the 90’s ,” “2000–2010.” etc.It’s all pretty helter-skelter now, but when the kids are here (now as very grown-up adults) they pull out the old albums and show their kids.

@Adirondackwannabe reminded me – yes, don’t store photos or any important documents in either the basement or the attic. Humidity levels fluctuate too much in those areas.

@jca You want a humidity fluctuation try a flood.. God that was hard.