It's OK to... Toss Old Printed Photos
Seven criteria to help “release”
I am not sure why our social programming is so strong to keep old printed photos. Marsha and I accumulated boxes of them from the days before digital cameras, and we have moved them across eight different locations together. Unlike digital photos that can be “searched” or that get featured automatically in iCloud Photo Memories, these printed photos have been unwieldy and just stay trapped in boxes!
Today, I decided to spend my Saturday afternoon culling through some of these printed photos.
I have written before about decluttering. We may feel regret tossing old printed photos because someone might want the photo someday or even guilt because it seems disrespectful to let go of the past for us, our parents, and our relatives. To help manage potential regret and guilt, I’ve come up with seven criteria to help me “release” and to just toss the printed photos. Any of these single criteria can be used to reject a photo:
No emotional connection
Poor quality
Near-duplicates
Unflattering
No one else will want them
Too generic
Too many photos from a single day
I know that by looking at my examples of applying these rules, the whole process may sound trivial. For me, it wasn’t, and I ended up scanning some photos that violated these rules to save digitally anyway. The challenge I have for you is whether you’ll be able to apply these rules to our own photos!
1. No emotional connection
This rule seems like an obvious one. This photo below was one where I could not identify the other child. I am confident my older daughter (pictured) wouldn’t remember either. Apologies if you are one of the readers of this Substack, and this child is yours, or if this child is you! (Yes, several of our daughters’ childhood friends are readers!) I honestly do not remember the moment captured in this photo.
2. Poor quality
Before the iPhone, it used to be much more difficult for amateur photographers to take crisp photos. This photo below is so blurry that it’s hard to tell that the subject is Marsha!
3. Near-duplicates
This photo below is a very close variation of a Pao family classic photo of our old cat, Hank, who passed back in 2010. I believe this physical photo was never digitized before because of the reflection in his eye.
The photo above was nearly identical to the one below that was already in the family collection, digitized a long time ago.
4. Unflattering
This photo below was one of several we took at Legoland in Denmark. Somehow, my terrible posture, combined with the way my shirt got untucked, made me look much heavier than the other photos from this day. I thought this photo was OK to toss!
5. No one else will want them
This photo below documented our laundry adventure during our trip to Scandinavia. We took a 3-week trip and counted on being able to utilze coin laundry midway through! This photo documented the brief “pause” of our vacation in order to take care of business. You can see both our white and our color loads. Still, we recognize that our kids and future generations probably don’t want this photo.
6. Too generic
Old cameras didn’t have GPS data. We know that this photo was taken some time during our trip to Australia, but we have no memory of where or even the day it was taken. It looks like it could be almost anywhere in the world. This photo was easily discarded.
7. Too many photos from a single day
We had a lot of photos from a day of golf with friends. This photo of me at the practice driving range before the round was one of the the least interesting of all of them, and we just didn’t need to keep so many photos from that single day.
The results
A bag of photos is headed to the shredder today. I’m making progress. Still, I was pretty weak. I scanned many photos “just in case.” (The photos for the case studies in this post were more obviously bad than the borderline cases I chose to scan before tossing.)
I’ll take a rest for a while on this, but I may return to this project in the near future.
Have you started culling through your old printed photos? Any wisdom to share?
I'm a minimalist so I applaud the purging. I agree with the generic, but IDK that I could let go of random unflattering pics, Aside from my own! But my husband died unexpectedly 3yrs ago and I'd be greatful for even the worst photos of him. Every now and again someone finds an old one of him and I get so happy. I think I'm okay with a digital hoard if it's of people and hopefully organized by year.
I went through a similar process when my parents died with their photo albums - and they had quite a few. I was scanning the “good” ones for distribution amongst my siblings mostly.
I have to say No 5 was slightly disproven by your example. Maybe scan the ones that spark a memory for you? Even if you know nobody else will want them. In time we need the odd aide-memoire.
If I applied No 4 with your example in mind, I would have ceased to exist long ago 😂.