Mission Project Generation -- Step 1: Sort/Organize Photos

After many months of discussions/begging my grandmother, she finally agreed to a little family history project!  She has so many stories of growing up and about her 50+ years of marriage to my grandpa that I really want to get these stories captured for future generations to enjoy and cherish.  I put her to task of collecting pictures from all over her house and bringing those down when they came for Thanksgiving!

She arrived with 4 small and 1 large box of pictures.  The pictures include my grandma's family (parents, 2 siblings and herself, their children/grandchildren; my grandpa's family (parents, 8 siblings and himself, their children/grandchildren; my grandparent's married years and my mom, my mom's family (my dad, brother and I) and now my brother's and my families.  So, the sorting began!!!   

First, we sorted out by "family" -- my grandpas, grandmas, their life together and then my mom's.

 Many, many stacks were created! 

 Once we got the pictures into their right stacks, we sorted those by family member.  So for my grandma's pictures we started with:
1) Her parents or their families
2) My grandmas years from birth-marriage
3) Grandma/Pa married  (mom's birth-marriage became another stack/section)
4) Section for her sister and her family (husband, kids, grandkids)
5) Section for her brother and his family (wife, kids, grandkids)

Each of these stacks were put into chronological order and then re-stacked. 

We had stacks EVERYWHERE!!!  It started getting overwhelming so we made a list of what order made sense to us and where things should fall and then we had a reference point whenever we started veering off course.  

All of the stacks/boxes have relocated to one of the spare bedrooms until they're able to come back down and work some more on our family history project.  My goal is to create a mini- family Tree at the beginning of each section and then include whatever stories my grandma remembers as we go.  I've explained that we are going with simple pages/minimal embellishments for several reasons... a) volume of pictures b) I believe the stories/history/memories are more important at this point c) a lot of the pictures are too aged/small to do much with d) a lot of the pics from when Chip and I were born (1980s) are already scrapbooked!

What's your tips and tricks for recording the past??  Do you have boxes of pictures around the house like we started with??