Because of this event, I decided to make a collage called 'Jeff...through the years'. That meant sneaking around gathering photos over the course of the last few weeks. When I realized that this was a tremendous undertaking, I was determined to organize all of our photos no matter what. I had photos everywhere. They were in file cabinets, in photo boxes, stashed in envelopes in cubbies, just everywhere.
But these paper photos - what a mess! Jeff was oblivious to any plans I had in making something for his retirement lunch. I just started going through all the stacks of photos as I gathered them up around the house. Then I opened all 6 of the photo organization storage boxes I had from the back of the closed. What a mess! As we sat around in the evenings unwinding, I just sorted and sorted and sorted some more. As I sorted, I started a pile for the collage I would eventually make.
The hard part about organizing photos is deciding how to categorize them. Once I looked through them some sorting was pretty natural...like trips to Niagara Falls, motorcycle events, Christmases, family, etc. Some things were a little more difficult to sort, like photos of friends and events like weddings (were they a friend's wedding or a family member's wedding?). I set the most difficult subjects aside and worked with the easy ones first. Before I knew it, I had the photos filed in 4 of the 6 photo boxes and labeled properly. A 5th box contained all the negatives and the memorabilia so I was feeling confident I was making good progress.
At this point I stopped because I really needed to concentrate on the collage. I looked at my stack of photos of Jeff that I set aside and that familiar feeling of being overwhelmed came rushing back. I eyed the photos and chose to apply the same concept that I used when filing all the rest of the photos. I sorted them by subject. Just Jeff, hunting & fishing, family, friends, sporting events, etc. It got easier and easier. Then I made cute labels to print out and add to the collage.
Just one day before the luncheon, I still did not have the collage ready. I didn't even have a display board to use. So I ran to the store and picked one up. I hid it just before Jeff came home from work. That evening, I tried to print my labels for the collage. Much to my dismay, the printer drivers weren't working and I had to reinstall them. So here it is, Tuesday night and I still have no collage to take to the lunch the next day.
I got up at 5:30 the morning of the luncheon. I had renewed vigor to tackle the collage. I decided that if I got it done, great and if not, oh well. No stress. I chose some blue card stock and loaded it into the printer. Instead of printing all 6 pages of my labels, I just printed one page. It worked perfectly! So I printed the other 5 pages and I was off and running.
I took the display board out of the package and laid it out flat. I cut all the labels from each page and started plopping the photos on the display board in piles by subject. I threw the labels I printed on top of each photo pile like I was dealing a deck of cards. One and a half glue sticks later, I had all the photos pasted on the board. I was ready. I even had time to go through the newspaper clippings about Jeff and the ticket stubs and other memorabilia, make copies of them and paste them on the board as well.
I got the project done with an hour to spare. At the lunch Jeff was so touched and surprised and his coworkers enjoyed picking up on a little history about Jeff. The display was a great hit and I am so glad I got it finished. It's nice to have a little conversation piece added to any party.
So now I am looking at the unfinished box of photos that is left. I was really sick of going through photos but I knew if I didn't finish the sorting and filing, I would regret it. It would become another unfinished project tucked away on the to-do list in my brain. I had to finish. I would only feel good if I could totally remove this from that list of things to do. So this morning, I sorted everything that was left and filed it away. Yes, it took me another 3 hours but it is done. Completely, without anything left over to file or to review. And I am happy to report that if I had to find something, I could easily.
Those photo boxes are back in the closet and there is more room in my file drawers. What a great feeling and a great week of making new memories.
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