How do I sort a huge box of old photos?

In two fast passes. First split into keep, duplicate and unidentifiable with no dating or labelling. Then group the keep pile loosely by decade. Trying to sort, date, label and scan in one pass is why most boxes never get finished.

What should I write on the back of a photograph?

Who, where and roughly when, in soft pencil in the margin. "About 1971" is perfectly acceptable; a wrong precise date is worse than an honest approximation.

Is it safe to write on old photos?

With a soft pencil and light pressure in the margin, yes. Avoid ballpoint, which indents through to the image, and ink pens, which can bleed or transfer onto adjacent prints.

Where should old photographs be stored?

Upright in an archival box, inside the heated part of the house. Lofts and garages cause more damage through temperature and humidity swings than ordinary handling ever does.

Photographs

How to organize old family photographs

September 5, 2026 · 7 min read

Sort family photographs in two passes rather than trying to organise them perfectly in one. First pass: split everything into keep, duplicate and unidentifiable, without dating anything. Second pass: group the keep pile loosely by decade or household, then label the backs in pencil with who, where and roughly when. Identify people before you organise anything, because the person who can name them is the part of this that is not replaceable.

Identify people first, sort later

Sorting is a task that will still be possible in twenty years. Identification frequently is not. If there is an elderly relative who can name faces, that work comes first, even if the boxes stay chaotic meanwhile.

Take the unlabelled photographs to them in batches of twenty or thirty. Record the session rather than making notes: names, places and relationships arrive faster than you can write, and side comments often turn out to be the most valuable part.

The two-pass method

Most people fail at photo organising because they try to do everything to every photograph at once: sort, date, label, scan and caption in a single pass. That is slow enough to guarantee the box gets put back in the loft.

First pass, fast: three piles only. Keep, duplicate, and cannot identify. No dating, no labelling. Handle each photograph once.
Second pass: group the keep pile roughly by decade or by household. Rough is fine; precise chronology is rarely achievable and rarely necessary.
Third pass, only for the best: label and scan. Most collections have 50 to 150 photographs genuinely worth reproducing.

How to label without damaging anything

Write on the back with a soft pencil, in the margin rather than the centre, using light pressure. Ballpoint indents through to the image and ink can bleed or transfer onto whatever the photograph is stacked against.

Record who, where and roughly when. "Mum, Nana and me, back garden, Chesterfield, about 1971" is a complete label. A precise date is not needed and guessing badly is worse than writing "about".

What to keep and what to let go

Duplicates, near-identical frames from the same moment, badly damaged prints with no identifiable subject, and scenery with no people in it can generally go, unless the place itself is part of the story.

Keep anything with a face you can name, anything showing a house or workplace described in the family story, and anything with writing on the back. Written backs are documents in their own right.

Storage that does not destroy them

Where photographs are kept matters more than how they are sorted.

Not the loft or the garage. Heat and humidity swings do more damage than decades of ordinary shelf storage.
Not the old self-adhesive "magnetic" albums, whose adhesive yellows and eventually bonds to the print.
Upright in an archival box, in a cupboard inside the living space, is the simple answer.
Keep the shoebox photographs away from anything that has been laminated or stored in PVC sleeves, which off-gas and stain.

Common questions

How do I sort a huge box of old photos?: In two fast passes. First split into keep, duplicate and unidentifiable with no dating or labelling. Then group the keep pile loosely by decade. Trying to sort, date, label and scan in one pass is why most boxes never get finished.
What should I write on the back of a photograph?: Who, where and roughly when, in soft pencil in the margin. "About 1971" is perfectly acceptable; a wrong precise date is worse than an honest approximation.
Is it safe to write on old photos?: With a soft pencil and light pressure in the margin, yes. Avoid ballpoint, which indents through to the image, and ink pens, which can bleed or transfer onto adjacent prints.
Where should old photographs be stored?: Upright in an archival box, inside the heated part of the house. Lofts and garages cause more damage through temperature and humidity swings than ordinary handling ever does.