Joan left a question on the “suggest an item” stage:

A deceased good friend’s photo albums need to be disposed of. Mainly of family, friends and her cats, loathed to just chuck them in a bin, other than that, what do I do? Help…..

I’m sorry to hear about your friend, Joan.

The Photos

I’m presuming no one wants to keep them as they are – but if you have access to a scanner and a spare couple of hours, I’d recommend scanning them into a computer before you do anything with them. People may be more interested in having a copy of/access to the digital ones – you could store them online with something like Dropbox (which gives you 2GB of online storage space for free), and you might feel more free to doing something with them if you know there is a copy available if you ever want to see them again. Friends and family may want to keep a few hardcopies of special pictures too.

Because of how the paper is treated to be photographic paper, it can’t usually be recycled – the chemicals (including polythene) clog up paper recycling facilities. However, old (black and white/painted or very dated vintage colour) pictures are desirable for art/craft reuses – if you’re not the arty/crafty sort yourself, you could try giving them away via Freecycle/Freegle. We’ve addressed the question of snapshot photos before so some of those suggestions may inspire some ideas.

The Photo Albums

Because of the mix of paper/card with plastic, they’re not easily recyclable – but if the photos have been removed for scanning, the photo albums could be reclaimed and reused. Re-cover it with pretty paper or thin fabric, if you want to give it a new look.

If you don’t have a large album-worthy collection of photos yourself, you can use them for other things – flip-style albums are great for recipes or clippings. I know some frugal people in the US use them for keeping their coupons in order and I teach a couple of drama classes and use flip albums to store my exercises/lesson plan ideas — lots of possible organisational uses.

If they’re still in good condition and you don’t want to use them, then charity shops will take them – or you could sell them on eBay.

Any other ideas for either the photos or the albums?

We’ve had an email from Tamara asking:

How can I reuse photo albums that hold up to 300 photos? I have a few as I have created photo books instead. I would like to find another use for the photo albums.

If they’re still in good condition, it might be worth giving them to your local charity shop for someone else to use but I went through a period of decorating my photo albums (because they were dull to start with) and I doubt anyone would want them.

Other reuses then. The most obvious one that springs to mind – but may only be good for flip albums, not big multi-pics-on-a-page ones – is for recipes: write the recipe on a bit of card or paper, slip it into the photo slot and the plastic sleeve will protect it from cooking splatters and greasy fingers while you work. A flip album could also be used as an address book.

Any other suggestions?

(On related topics, we’ve already covered unwanted photos and negatives – check those out for lots of creative ideas!)

(Photo by lusi)