Have your DH pay someone to scan them - not really all that expensive. Have them stored on the cloud (lots of places to do this). And toss the hard copies. Much safer. No risk of the pictures being destroyed by fire, heat, rain, (or an pissed off SM }:) ). Every child can have access - no fighting over who gets the pictures.

Scan them and save them to CD's
Give the CD's to DH to put in a safety deposit box.
Not that big of a deal

I'm probably not the person to reply. SDs, 20 and 21, moved back with DH when their mom died. They brought back all sorts of stuff when they did. Then they moved out and left it.

Then we met, married, and he moved to my house as I still had a child at home. When he sold his house I helped him clean. I packed up and donated the ex's clothing that they had moved back for some unknown reason. In among the stuff was a really nice cedar chest that the ex's father, the SDs' grandfather, had made. SDs said they didn't have room for it. I'm a sucker for family heirlooms so, hoping one of the girls will appreciate it one day, we moved it to the cellar storage portion of my house. A couple of years later, after my child left, we bought a house together. We moved the chest with us. In the chest were 29 years of family pictures, the girls' communion dresses, and the ex's wedding gown. It's in my cellar.

And no I didn't deliberately move her dress into my house. It was at the bottom of the chest and covered with items DH wanted to save for the girls. I'm not sure he even realized it was there either.

Last year DH decided that he'd do something with the pictures. He bought some picture storage boxes for each girl and sorted the pictures into what he considered fair equitable parts and put them in boxes marked with the girls' names. One daughter has taken hers. The other has them sitting waiting for her.

Don't let the pictures have power over you. They are just pictures of the past (and the past cannot be changed. she is their mother. he is their father). If your husband could do what my husband did, it might make it seem more like the kids' possessions and not BM's.
As they marry you could make the pictures your wedding present. (A gift for the cost of the wrapping paper.)

Baby pictures once destroyed cannot be replaced.

Are there any reliable grandparents or aunts or uncles of the stepkids that could take them? Or maybe you could get your husband to pay for them to be digitalized and then stored remotely somewhere (probably not the best option, but an idea I came up with).

ETA: I read the other responses and apparently I am not the only one to suggest digitalizing them!

Please, please get them back into the hands of her or her parents, adult family members.

They may be in your attic---ugh,,but they belong to that family. OK?

Box them up get an address and send them 2nd class if need be. RETURN receipt and proof of signature.

Just in case your accused of burning them or never giving them to the family.

We have been accused of many many things that were untruths. I Speak from my own experience here.

One of the perks of BM and DH having SS so young and splitting so soon after his birth is that I don't have to deal with any of this. No hidden wedding gowns in my attic, no shrines or collages of BM and DH together in my cellar...I'd like to think I would give this stuff to BM if I found it but honestly it would depend on the day. Some days BM really pushes my buttons and some days she a non-existent.

I don't understand why they bother you so much. They are pictures packed away in a box, it's not like they are hanging on the wall and you have to see them everyday!

You are letting the idea of them upset you.

Imagine that they were pictures of your parents. How would you feel if someone tossed them out simply because they didn't like that your father was at one time married to your mother.
This isn't about you and how you feel about BM or the skids. Your husband is right, they are for the kids. Let it go!

There is a pile of old family photos w/bm in the bottom of DH's closet that has other junk and dust on it and then there is a box of photos in our storage room. If anything happened to DH I would drop them off with ss26. For now they don't bug me, he has photos of his sons when they were younger on his desk and one pic of sgs8 on the fridge. He's really not a pic person except for keeping them in some dark dusty box.

I have plenty of photos of exH in the kids baby albums but they are on a shelf and not open for display. They will want pics of their father one day.

I would just box them up and send them to BM. I'd pen a note like, "Thought you might want these" and leave it at that. He'll likely never even notice they're gone and by the time he does tell him that BM wanted to have them and you felt it was right for her to have her photos.

never bothered me, SO has a couple off boxes of photo's stashed in the garage... I simply moved it under the geyser,
thus if there's a water leak ,,, }:)

Oh I did go through them.... and I did take a couple of her photo's shoot photo's, big enough to duck tape to my punching bag, and well one is pinned on the dart board..... benefits of living in my own house

Any photos that have BM in them should go back to her. Playing devil's advocate here, I'd be really upset to lose photos of myself with my kids when they were little. Giving them to her is the right thing to do.

Just leave them in the box, in the attic, until steps move out. It really isn't a big deal.

If you make it a big deal, they may want them now and you will find them all over your house.

:jawdrop:

I purchased a nice small trunk and put all of my DH's "past" pictures in it for the skids. SD56 began asking about them one day, so I scanned them and made scrapbook picture albums for all three of my grown Skids. Then I put the originals back in the trunk and out of sight. If anything happens to my DH, I would immediately give the trunk to SD; it is ready to go. It contains not only family pictures, when his children were young, but military pictures and pictures of his grandparents and family, when he was a small boy; and yes it contains several pictures of BM.

I would never have trashed the wedding album. I left my wedding album with my Ex. If these pictures are in your attic and out of sight, let it go.

I detest my SD56, I am totally disengaged, and I am not close with my grown step-sons, but I would never try to destroy their past; trashing the wedding album didn't change the fact it happened years, before you.

I understand your feelings, but you need to remember, this is not about you. I'm sorry this is taking up your thinking to this point. DH and I have been married 37 years and I've listened to every past event, story, talk, talk, talk, over and over from my hateful SD56 about her life with her Dadeeee.....With that said, I ignored her and I would never destroy any of her physical memories; it won't get rid of my SD and her mouth; it doesn't change the situation, it has nothing to do with me, and I don't think about BM.

It is difficult for me to understand why they are bothering you that much; maybe we aren't getting the entire story here. My DH's memory chest sits in the guest bedroom and I never think of them, not even when I dust the chest. While writing to you here, I had to stop and remember where I had put the chest.

Sorry!

They are pics in a box in the dusty attic. That's how little they mean to everyone else. Long forgotten and collecting dust. Not exactly the thing to get upset over.

Until a few months ago DH and I were living in a small condo with ONE closet. No other storage space at all. No attic, no garage, no linen closet.

No way I would have stored anything for anybody.