I am widow, 70 years old and trying to sort through slides of my married life. Husband died 2005. I had an epiphany today. Get rid of them. No one cares about those memories. Is this something we seniors all reach as a breaking point and give up saving photos which no one really cares about?
ElderChicks 
I’m torn. I feel that way today but sometime from now I may want to go back n relive those memories. After all I’m 70 too this year n plan on living for quite a while longer.
I feel photographs are very painful .They bring up bad memories as well as good the ones. We who keep them after a long period of time are generally the most interested. The best memories are the ones we keep in our heart and they get better as time goes by.
I understand completely your feelings here, but I would advise putting them away in a safe place and keeping them for children and grandchildren who may appreciate the memories. My mother died suddenly and left our family home and all its contents to my sister, who was her favorite. She left me the grand piano. My sister abdicated responsibility and let the house sit for a year, then finally had an estate sale, after keeping the expensive things for herself. Unfortunately, she failed to hang onto 40 years of photos and films stored in several places in the house. Those memories are now gone forever. I would have appreciated those photos now, as would my kids. Think about storing them and letting go at the same time.
Milly, I’m doing something similar with books. I don’t care about many of them
now, even though others retain their meaning, and sometimes get re-read.
During this pare down project I came across color prints that brought back
lovely memories that I care about, so I was glad to have kept them, even
though I last looked at them more than five years ago. If you care about them,
that’s enough. But, like clothing of a loved husband, I wanted to give them all
away so someone could use them. They had no sentimental attachment for me.
Clutter is not a good thing if you think you might have to move, ever. I hope
not to have to, but I may not have control over that, so I am paring down
now, in advance. Thanks for sharing!
You know I think you are right. It always makes me think about that when I go to garage sales and thrift shops and find so many framed portraits of people that people threw out. I am however saving the pics of relatives that are still going to be around after I am gone. It is so sad but true. We are but a fleeting moment in time. God bless you!
Hi Milly, I wonder if you have kids/grandkids? If so, you could save a couple for yourself, package the rest and give to the kids to make their own decisions as to what to keep or not. Another solution is that there may be a service which can scan these photos into a digital thumb drive. That would not take up any space to speak of and yet you could still access them from time to time.
Many folks now, young or old are faced with the dilemma of what to do with so many loose photos that are usually in drawers anyway and no one sees them. People feel guilty about throwing them away and feel obligated to do something about them. The good part is that the memories are in your heart and mind and are always with you.
A fun project can be to pick out a special photo and write a short memoir about it or a poem or use in in a scrapbook. Then it becomes your own creation and not just something in a small rectangle.
Just a few thoughts from an 80-year-old.
From Maryann .
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I’ve digitized a lot of my old photos. Recently, I was asked what I had of my ex-husband and our family because he’d died and his daughters and wife were preparing a slide show for his funeral service. He and I were divorced almost 40 years ago, but I’d maintained a lot of his and our family photos on ky laptop. So I was glad that all I had to do was send them a Google drive after downloading the folder I’d created for his photos. I’ve also passed photos of two of my grandchildren (now 23 and 24) along to them whose mother hadn’t saved many of their photos taken when they were small children. A grandson had lost all his photos because he’d been a drug addict and alcoholic. Thank goodness he’s been sober for several years now with a beautiful family. In his case, I actually printed the photos I’d digitized previously and gave him an album as a Christmas gift. I did a similar project for my two adult twin daughters. Again, they’d lost many of them because of various circumstances. Like a lot of people, though, I have a myriad of other photos, digitized already and more left to scan. My next task is to organize them into family groups and pass them along as gifts for those family members who’re interested in keeping them.
Memories of loved ones, be it parents, a spouse, a dear friend, are pages and chapters of one’s life.
Photos can be tossed and memories buried, but the legacy of love cannot be erased nor should be forgotten.
I am having the same feelings. Neither son or daughter are married and there are no grandchildren. Not going to mean anything to anyone.
Dominique, Your son and daughter are likely, according to changing life-span projections, to live long lives. I hope so! Whether or not either has children doesn’t mean that memories won’t come to mean a great deal as they age. Many of us find a different attitude toward memories as we keep growing.