I have been concentrating on whittling down our family photos not just a manageable level but to a meaningful inventory. Here are a few insights from that process for me.

Counting-Stuff versus Just-Spark-Joy

You know how Marie Kondo (konmari) never gives specific counts of things, just leaves it at whatever sparks joy? Well, I noticed that we can set our own numbers for ourselves and still be true to her konmari method.

Marie sets a strict count in her “Spark Joy” book. Marie and her sister assembled an anniversary album for their parents and the album they filled had a limited number of pages. They had a cap of 100 photos. So she had to pay attention to the inventory of the selection, as well as the individual selections themselves. Knowing they were restricted to 100 pictures, they then set some parameters: represent a variety of “eras” of their parents’ marriage and make sure their mom looked good in all the photos.

Limits can become freedoms

I took Marie’s approach with my own photos, even though I was not filling an album with a certain number of pages. I was so overwhelmed by the volume of my photos and yet, I had less than 4,000 physical photos in a photo-archive box. I set a limit of 100 photos each for me, my husband and each of my kids. That limit turned out to be such a freedom and forced me into making good choices. For instance, my husband was in a rock band in college and, at one of the few gigs that was photographed, there were probably 10 photos and all were pretty good. However, if everything is special, then nothing is special, as the saying goes. The limit on the photos meant I had to select the best single photo. I did … it was the one that had every member in it, had the band name on a banner in it and had my husband obviously singing at the microphone. When I explained to him why it was the best one, he was like “oh yeah! I see that now …”

Make better decisions faster

I culled the thousands of photos down to a smaller inventory (600) of photos and the decisions became simultaneously more difficult but I was making those difficult decisions with better accuracy. Does that make sense?

Because the new photo inventory was manageable, I was able to digitally scan them with our scanner/printer instead of buying special equipment or sending them to a service. Scanning 600 photos was mind-numbing work to do that but in the end, I now have a “this is your life” slideshow on each member of my family. I do not know why, but I find this very comforting, like a huge checklist item is done. Plus, as I scanned the photos, I mulled over the conditions of these relationships through the years. It gave me the time to slow down and work in my heart to pray for forgiveness for ways (realized and unrealized) I might have emotionally hurt anyone and to forgive wrongs (mostly unintentional) done to me.

Commit to being thorough

I had a stack of DVDs with family photos on them that needed to be “processed”. I was tempted to skip it because, frankly, I was swimming in photos of my kids right then. I am SO GLAD I did this “just to be thorough”. I went through each DVD one by one. It did not take a lot of time; all it took was one evening! In just a few hours, I plucked all the joy-sparking photos off of the dvds and moved them to my hard drive (and soon, to the cloud).

Up to this point in my konmari decluttering, my collection of photos had so few photos of me being a mom. For my “100 photos of me”, I was sometimes just settling for pictures with my hand or side of my face or even my foot in them. These photo dvds were provided to me by my in-laws, my mom, my husband and my sister so they were some of the few photos I found with me in them. And I am actually recognizable in some of them.

The ultimate goal: peace!

I feel more peaceful than I have in a long time. And you will too. Thanks, konmari.