And before I close the shutter... (Part 3)

So the day after I thought I had everything sorted out here, I came across...more photos!  Stowed away in some other bookshelf.  Damn, looks like I'll have to buy another photo album.  One more should do the trick, and leave me ready for any future prints that the parental units send my way.  Or maybe I have some to toss out (more on that later).

But here's the real interesting thing.  I have found photos and video of MY STUFF.  Back in 2004 I made a short video with my camcorder, giving a narrated little tour of my apartment and what was in it.  I had just bought Clutter's Last Stand that same day.  And more recently, I found photos from possibly the same period of the same thing: my clutter.

I knew that I took both of these in hopes of doing a "before and after" comparison.  But I'm not going to post them here.  Why?  I hate to say this but...my apartment looks WORSE now than it did then.  I have more stuff now than I did back then.

That's not to say there was no progress.  I noticed some things in that video and the photos that I've long since gotten rid of.  But it seemed that the NET accumulation of stuff has increased since then.  Needless to say, this is making me rethink a few different approaches.  But I'm sure not throwing in the towel.  I do see different areas of clutter to attack next.  There will be no shortage of material this year for this blog, I'm sure.

Not surprisingly, Clutter's Last Stand has a section on photographs.  Here are some quotes and a summary of the section:

"What a priceless property our own pictures can be -- they allow us to relive precious moments, stimulate memories and feelings, bring laughter and warmth to our families, friends and co-workers.  But if you're like most people, probably 75% of your pictures are pile,d boxed, buried, bent, or unfindable.  The only value a photo has is in being seen.  If that isn't possible what good is it?"

So that much I think I've been able to do.  I think that was one of my subconscious reasons for getting the photos out of the envelopes and into an album.

The author goes on with a 4-step suggestion for tackling photos.

1. Create some categories that fit you. The emphasis here is on "you".  This is going to be different for different people, since we belong in different groups and circles.  But some of the obvious categories suggested are "Family", "Friends", "Vacatoins", "One-Time Events", "Other".
2. Eliminate bad or unwanted pictures.  Unless some really crappy photo WAY too sentimental, like the only photo you have of some deceased relative, then "discard ruined shots, blurred and cut-off shots, too dark, too light, slips, bad photos" and so on.  Of course, photograph restoring has come a long way since this book was first written, and as mentioned I've been able to restore photos myself with just my scanner and cheap photo software.  Though this still begs the question of whether or not restoring a particular photo is worth the effort.  If you have 10 crappy photos of an event but 20 good photos of the same event with all the same people, maybe you can toss the crappy ones.  You can also give away photos to relatives and whoever.  Another win-win situation!
3. Sort all remaining pictures. "You'll probably find yourself adding or changing a few categories as you sort through.  You might want to identify all faces and places while you remember who they are."
4. Pick a medium for displaying the pictures.  "Remember, a picture's only value is to be SEEN. You want yours to be protected, but easily located and displayed and organized so new pictures can be added easily."  I was happy to see the author shares my love for "ring-binder albums with looseleaf plastic pocket pages."  Though there's also wall mountings, scrap books, enormous poster-sized collages, slide show, etc.

In the meantime, I have a photo frame that I got as a birthday gift about 2 years ago, and still haven't gotten around to filling:

The real challenge for this of course is: who do you put in the four spaces.  Yes, "friends", I know.  But can you possibly represent all of your friends in two landscape and two portrait photos?  I sure as hell can't, and I don't even consider myself an extrovert.  And of course, I fear a friend visiting my home and not seeing themselves there, or somebody else saying "Why don't you have [particular friend] in here?!?"

Well, I just stayed up through dawn gathering the photos and printing them out.  The margins were a little wider than I wanted in some places, but the hell with it.  It's done.  Good night.