Well, I started with 12 of those shoebox size archival boxes full... threw the equivalent of 2 boxes full in the garbage... set aside half a box full for my mom and brother (they just lost everything in the wildfires and asked for photos), and some for another friend, pulled out all the pictures of my classrooms over the years and added some of them to my "portfolio" then trashed the rest, pulled out all the photos of quilts and put them in sleeves and put them with my quilting patterns...
And I have 8 BOXES full left!! I guess the next step s scrapbooking 3 or 4 events of my grandsons for my daughter, then I want to make a scrapbook of all of my dogs... That will probably leave 7 boxes.
I'm just not really sure what I want to do with these. Putting them in archival sleeves in albums would be expensive, but if I'm not going to really preserve them, why keep them at all? Also, many of these I have not looked at in several years. And, I want the "important" ones to be really portable, i.e. probably Not in heavy albums.
[As I mentioned, my brother & SIL, and my mother, both lost their entire homes to wildfire 2 weeks ago. Then a grass fire started 20 miles from where I live yesterday evening!! As I looked around and mentally ran through the 5 P's for evacuation- People, Pets, Prescriptions, Papers, Photos- I realized I'm in really good shape with everything but the photos.]
I guess the answer really is to scan the Important Ones to a thumb drive. (I scanned all my important papers to thumb drive 1.5 year ago) But what about the rest? Keep? Dump? Feedback? Ideas?