Our Guide to Organizing Photos
When we think of clutter, most of us think about the messes throughout our homes. We think of the endless toys scattered all over the floor. We think of the shoes and coats littering our entryways. We think of the endless piles of dishes that pile up on the countertop next to the sink. This is the clutter that we can see every day, right in front of us.
There is another type of clutter that most of us either ignore or do not want to think about. That is digital clutter. This is the stuff that piles up on our computer desktops or on our phones. Today, I am going to focus on how I handle one type of digital clutter: PHOTOS!
How many photos do you have on your phone? 100? 500? 1000? 2000?
I would venture to guess that you don’t even know. In fact, I usually don’t know either until it gets to the point where I am running out of storage on my phone! I bet that is when you think about what to do with your photos & videos, too.
A couple of years ago, I found myself at this point. My phone was running out of storage and I had to do something. So, I started transferring photos to a file that I had created on my desktop. When I opened the file, I started scrolling through old photos and videos and we spent the evening enjoying our old memories. We had not really done this up until this year.
What we needed in our home, was a better system to organize the thousands of photos (and I mean upwards of 20,000 photos randomly saved in a folder on our desktop!). One birthday party could easily have 200 photos! And, with the accidental push of a button, we can lose a very special memory. In fact, it was this very situation that prompted me to create this process. I had a phone that broke, and we needed new phones. I was not able to get to the photos on the broken phone to save them on my computer. I panicked! Our precious memories and videos, GONE. I was so sad and started thinking about who I could call to see if they have photos to send to me. Then I remembered that we had backed up some photos. Was there hope? Yes! I found them, all in google photos, and some in dropbox. And some uploaded to Facebook and other places. Yes, I was able to find photos and videos that I thought were gone forever!
I saved the photos I found to my huge folder with thousands of photos. But still, there was no rhyme or reason to the photos. So, I began the painstaking work of trying to organize these photos. I was not deleting anything yet! I wanted to simply organize them first so that I can easily find what I am looking for. Once I had them organized, I decided that I didn’t want all of our memories to get lost on a computer, or social media, never to be seen again until Facebook decides to show you a few memories from several years ago. And I certainly didn’t want to have to see photos only through a computer screen.
I created a method to organize all of our photos and videos and saving them to multiple places to ensure a copy can be found somewhere. Now, while I do know how to use a computer and my phone, I am not terribly technically savvy. So, my system had to be easy enough for me to be able to do it without getting too technical. I chose 3 places where to keep photos. This might seem like overdoing it, but if one is accidentally deleted, I always have a backup somewhere else. Those 3 places are the following:
1 – Cloud Service
2 – Flash Drive
3 – Printed photos in an album
Photo Organization Process
1. Schedule a time for organizing photos and plan how often you will tackle organizing photos.
Will you go through your media once per week? Daily? Monthly? Quarterly? Yearly? You need to have a timeframe in mind. I decided to tackle photos and videos once per year and new year’s is the best time to organize photos from the previous year. I don’t want to be bogged down with this each month or even quarterly, so once a year after the new year is perfect time. In fact, we really do not have too much going on in January so it’s the perfect month to tackle this type of clutter. Regardless of which month you choose, setting up a timeframe is critical to reduce this clutter. When we do not take the time to organize all of the photos we take, it begins to pile up and will take us back to where we previously were. Yes, it is on our phones or computers, but if they are not organized, when we need to find a photo it will be a nightmare.
2. Set up a backup for all of your photos & keep the photos in their original size.
Set up a service that will automatically backup photos for you. I use google photos to take care of this for me. You will need to ensure to go to your settings and choose for photos to be backed up in their original size. Oftentimes, services will back up a reduced size of each photo. You will want to back up the original quality so that you can get beautiful prints. You can do this by checking original quality/size in your photo cloud settings. I am usually the photographer, but sometimes my husband will have some photos that I may miss. A service like google photos makes it easy to share photos with each other. This way I don’t miss anything that we want to keep.
Uploading photos to social media is nice, and it’s great getting memories from years past. However, when you upload to these social media websites, the photo is reduced in size. That means, if you want to later save a copy of your photo and print it, it will come out looking grainy and not as sharp. Uploading your photos directly to your computer or backing up the original size to a service like google photos is a much better way to save your photos. Especially if one day you would like to make prints from the photos you’ve taken.
Think about it, we take all of this time to take the perfect photo. One sitting can get you 50 photos just to get that perfect pose. And then you finally take that perfect family photo, and then you upload it to social media where it is then compressed to a smaller size. You delete your photos from your phone because you want to free up space. Later, you decide you love that photo so much that you would like to print it and frame it for your wall. You think, “luckily, I put it on Facebook, let me make a copy and make a print from it.” You send it off for printing and now the image you get is grainy and looks distorted. All of that work for the perfect photo was just ruined.
3. Transfer your photos to a flash drive.
I like to buy a large capacity flash drive so I can save them all to the same usb. You can, however, have a different usb for each year. The choice is yours. Keeping them on a flash drive gives you an additional place where you can find your photos in case something happens. Simply insert the flash drive into your computer and plug your phone in. Choose to import your photos to the flash drive.
4. Organize your photos into files.
Grouped by year, I put together 3 files. One file is just of image files. The second file is all video files. And the third file is for the group of photos that I will have printed for my album. This makes it easy to find the 200 photos that I want to upload for printing. I decided that 200 photos to highlight the year is enough. I buy the albums that hold 200 photos, but you can certainly buy albums that hold more if you like.
5. Get photos printed.
Now that you have everything organized, you can go ahead and get the photos printed for the album. I use Walgreens.com for my printing. Usually, I can find a promo code and the prints cost me very little. In fact, this month each 4×6 print is $0.10. Plus, they are everywhere, and they offer same day pick up. You can use whatever service you like best. Be sure to check each photo to crop and adjust the printing area. Once I sent them through without checking and found many photos that were cut off at the wrong spot. Quickly glance at photos to edit crops or rotate before submitting your order for printing.
6. Insert photos into album & note special memories inside your album.
Once upon a time, the house phone was connected to the wall and couldn’t take pictures. The home telephone was nothing more than a phone. During those simpler times, we had a roll of 24 exposure film that you had to put into a camera, and we had 24 pictures to take. We would get those rolls developed and put those photos in a photo album! As I looked through this huge file of photos on my computer, I realized the simplicity of an album was what I was missing. While we are constantly on social media, I was missing the simplicity of just opening an album and looking at all of my photos for the year just like I am reading a book. Photos get backed up, uploaded to social media, and are largely forgotten until Facebook chooses a photo to show you from several years prior. I love that, but outside of that reminder, I have to dig around social media, or a folder filled with thousands of photos, just to find a specific memory or event. I realized that while we are taking more photos these days, we are enjoying them less than we did when we simply had an album of photos. This is why I choose to do this in addition to storing the digital photos on a flash drive and in a cloud.
This last step is the fun part of this process. As I previously mentioned, I purchase albums that hold 200 4×6 photos. Each album has a section in the front and next to each photo to write in something about the photos. I love adding the photos in the album and noting the special times within the year. It’s an entire year of memories all at once without scrolling through thousands of photos! These albums are not too big, so they do not take up a lot of space. Once all of the photos are added to the album, simply add it to your décor or your bookshelf. I keep them on an end table, and they are part of my décor because they are so beautiful. The kids and entire family grab the albums and look through them many times throughout the year.
I hope this process helps you get started on your digital clutter. Please comment below and tell me if this has worked for you. Do you have a different process that cuts down the time spent organizing digital clutter?
