A big project around here lately has been scanning all the shoeboxes of old pictures.  There were a lot of them.  I am ashamed to say we are just now doing this.  SO many disasters could have befallen them over the years.  I shudder to think.   15 houses, 10 babies, 5 states, a couple countries, and a fair number of miscellaneous crises in the intervening years kept me preoccupied.  Being the poster child for biting off more than I could chew didn't help either.  Which brings us to date and saddled with all these vulnerable pictures. 

My solution was to pay the 12 yr old to sit here and scan pictures while watching netflix. Brilliant. <g>  He was happy as a lark and more than qualified to move pictures from box, to scanner bed, to another box.  A couple movies and several hundred pictures later we are nearly done.  If you find the prospect daunting I suggest tapping your young people.  No willing workers?  There are national scanning services and many local printers or photography shops will do the job as well.

I am sharing some links with tips for scanning your old photos here and here   Basically you want to be sure your scanner is set to 'photo' vs document and at 300dpi. 

When you are done scanning consider saving copies of the files to an external hard drive.  Cpu's fail.  Hard drives fail.  One copy is unwise. 

And don't forget the whole point of having these pictures is that they are part of your story.  Tell it.  The most important book you will ever write is the one you write for your family.  What happened?  When?  Where? and more importantly – how did you feel about that? This is what I am working on now.

 It's ok to document random memories out of 'order'.  If they come to mind when you see an old picture, write it down.  If you don't have photoshop, start a photobook at Shutterfly and drag an old photo over to your project here and there as the mood strikes. They keep your stuff saved a long time.  (another back up)