Photo Organization
Organization and Action Steps to Organize Your Photos
Organizing photos can, shall we say, feel extremely overwhelming. When we know that our photos are a mess, we feel anxious. Either we feel like we might lose something, or the sheer volume of photos is too much. We feel out of control of them. Once we get everything sorted, deleted or moved to the right folders, the anxiety goes away. The purpose of photos is enjoyment. One quick tip is to put a heart or star by your favorites to make them easier to find in the future. Look to The Uncluttered Life’s Declutter Deck® for tips and tricks about home organization.
Organization
Photos do not take up physical space, but they take up a lot of mental and emotional space.
Why do we keep all these photos? A good, annual book of photos will encourage conversation as opposed to just scrolling through a bunch of look-alike photos that need to be deleted.
It will be easiest to gather all digital photos together on a computer with an external hard drive.
A cloud service is someone else’s server that gives you access to things remotely. It provides backup, security and accessibility to find and utilize photos.
A photo book made from your favorite photos is a wonderful gift.
Action Steps
When you scroll through your photos to delete them, resist the urge to delete the junk photos first. It will take too many hours to scroll all the way back to the beginning of your photos.
Put all your photos in one place. Make a list of where you have digital photos saved.
Technology is a gift when used correctly. Let technology help organize your photos. There are programs that find duplicates, and there are ways to sort photos into folders by year and month. You can also set up smart folders to help you with this.
Once your photos are organized, put them in a cloud service. That way, you can enjoy them and have access to them from your phone.
Make three copies of your photos. Place one on your local computer, one offsite (the cloud), and one on your phone.
Once you’ve organized and backed up your photos, make a book. There are many programs available to help you with this. I tend to use Chatbooks, but there are many others.