I had _a_ photo album. As in one. When my crazy grandmother died, my mother went through her stuff and figured out what to do with it. I got a bottle of brandy and an unused photo album. Because I was so young (too young to have a learners permit, even), I did not understand about paper acidity. I did know that sticky paged photo albums sucked, so I was happy to have a nice, leather-bound album that I could use photo corners in. By the time I was in my 20s, I'd gotten suspicious enough to stop using it. I had some other albums, but eventually dismantled all of them except this one, in favor of a, as in one, photo box (part of this involved the move across country).

After R. and I got married, I took a photo album we were given as a wedding gift and filled it with the lovely pictures A. took of us. But some of the photos were too big to fit into the album, and in any event, we did fill it. Over the ensuing years, we had piles of photographs in boxes, files, baggies and just stacked up on shelves and so forth. Recently, I've been collecting photos -- and cards that have significant contents (that is, they are really letters) -- in one place to try to figure out where we should keep them. I've been having things framed, and I finally decided to give in and set up a photo album. Maybe two.

It has already morphed into a crateful, and I haven't meaningfully touched the photo box yet. I'm pretty sure this is exactly why I gave up on albums before. On the other hand, it is almost a decade worth of material and not only do we have small children, so do all of our friends. My kids are at the beginning of the age range of being-interested-in-pictures-of-people, so I'm going to pursue this at least a little ways.

The good news is that we have a spare table to work on. The bad news is that I don't dare leave things out overnight, because the kids might get into it in a damaging way in the morning. The solution is to re-crate things each night, altho I'm storing supplies on a high bookshelf, and may rearrange some more bookshelves to make room for the completed (sort of) albums.