What can l do with the photo negatives l have kept through the years?

If I did the math right, your negatives are from around 1970-99.

You could donate the whole albums with negatives to your local historical society for them to use as they wish.

You can go through the negatives, picking out photos you want a copy of, and how many copies you need for family or friends. Use a permanent marker, not black, to put a dot or check mark at the very edge of the individual frames you want printed, with the number of copies on the edge, too.

To see the negatives, you need a light box. If you have access to one, great! A magnifying glass will certainly help. If you don't have a light box, instead of making one, just use your cell phone or tablet. In settings, choose solid white background. Or just clear your screen as much as you can. Then just place a negative strip on top of this light box, use the magnifying glass to choose negatives to print, and use your marker to note your order.

Wait for a coupon or sale for wherever you want your prints to be made.

If you don't want to do anything with the negatives, don't burn them and don't put them in a recycle bin. The chemicals can be toxic. That leaves the trash can.

I hope you find an idea you can use. Best wishes 😇

I went through all my old photos and discarded the duplicates and otherwise useless photos (too blurry, bad composition, etc.). I bought a photo scanner and scanned all the photos into digital copies. I took my time scanning and did it in batches over the course of a month or so. Then I put the originals in archival quality boxes.

Great idea

Instead of having prints made, go to photography shop (specialty) and see if they can put the desired pictures on a DVD or flash drive for you . That way, you can make copies for family members .

@Maggie , you are so right. And where we live, you can send an order from your phone straight to Walgreen's or CVS Pharmacy Photo Dept. , and you can pick up your photos in an hour or a day, or have them mailed to you. If you have a coupon, there's a place to enter that, too. 😇

thanks everyone for your ideas.