For our BLC challenge this week we are writing ‘What’s on our mind.” Today my mind is filled with faces of people -- people from my own and extended family, plus faces of acquaintances and friends over the years.

A few weeks ago we finally opened the box of photos that belonged to the now deceased parents of my DH. The photos date back to perhaps late 1920’s. None of the photos were written on so we had to discard the ones we could not identify. Of course my DH had to do most of the identification of these photos and then I wrote who they were on the backs of the photos. This was very enlightening to me, seeing photos of people at a young age that I met when they were an older age. Also photos of my DH and his brother and cousins as they grew up. We finally finished that box of photos and continued on to the box of our own family photos dating since we were married in 1965. So that has been our task for several weeks and it has been challenging to remember dates, places and the faces of some of our children’s friends. I guess it’s been good memory exercise, though.

Over the years, I have made several photo albums so those photos are categorized but not written on. After our experience with DH’s parents’ photos, I think they should all be identified.

When we told someone what we were doing they said: “Why are you doing all that? Your kids will probably just get rid of them in a flash.”

That may be true. Our daughter asked us if we were thinking of digitalizing them. Most of our photos in later years are digital, but we usually have some printed because we like the prints. The task of digitalizing all the prints seems too daunting right now.

Once we get them all marked and sorted, we may leave it at that. Or we may put some in albums. Whatever happens to them after that is up to our children. I will say just going through them all and organizing them has been a very meaningful experience.

What do you do with all your old photos?