Storing your Family Treasures

I have been very fortunate that my family has kept all the photos and different documents from our past relatives. My Grandma and her Aunt Lovella, who as 3 years older than my Grandma were the families record keepers. Our photos were kept in boxes in dark, dry closets which wasn't all that bad. I often wondered why these weren't on display. But actually their technique was what kept those memories safe from fading.

Great Aunt Lovella Akin and Ola Mae Durbin c. 1930's

To truly preserve your families precious moments locked in time, you have to keep them from bright light. Sitting in a closet does protect them, but I love sharing these beautiful photos with my kids. Some of the methods I have done is to scan many of them and share them digitally with family far away. This has given myself a copy of them and had the opportunity to share precious treasures with my family. You can scan these photos with just any scanner. I love my Kodak scanner, and have tried a Flip-pal, which is a portable scanner. Really hoping to receive that as a Christmas gift. then you can upload them into any software program you already have to edit if need be, I use Photoscape which is a free program.

Nancy Ola and Dora Coffee c. 1880's

You can add the digital copies to any photo printing company, I personally like Heritage Makers because you work with someone and they can help you scan it to the proper size, and you wont end up with a book full of fuzzy photos.

What I have done with the originals is use Archival Mist, you can get this at any hobby store, such as JoAnn's. Place them in an acid free scrapbook to help keep harmful light from fading them. Here is a video from youtube on how to use Archival Mist.

I'll post more on how to safely remove photos that were glued to scrapbooks pages and how to remove safely the photos from the scrapbooks of the 80's that used non archival acid free sticky glue.