Organise your photos

Enjoy your photos!

Did you know that in 2015, Americans took 105 billion photos? That’s almost 200,000 photos per minute! How many photos did you take this week? And more importantly, what do you do with them?

Since we’ve moved away from printing pictures, we take gazillion photos. But what’s an easy way to store and organise them?

    1. Start with the end in mind. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to have everything in one place? Are you preparing for an anniversary slideshow? Our mother gave us an old fashioned photo album when we turned 18 and it documented how we grew up. Do you want to give away a similar present for Christmas? Define your goals for this project.
    2. Get your photos in one location. To understand what photos you have, gather them all in one spot. You may have a crafts table where you can keep them while organising them. Check your photo albums or boxes, scrapbooks, in containers or shoe boxes under your bed, manila folders and files or on the coffee table. Don’t forget the pictures put on your fridge, over your desk or in any framed pictures. You may also have photos in your jewellery box and dressers or as a reading mark in books.

Now, let’s gather your electronic photos from your phone (current and old ones), laptop, iPads, any CDs, DVDs and memory sticks. Do you store any photos in the cloud? Depending on the number of photos you have and whether you want to keep the printed ones, you may want to have 2 projects: Organising your printed and your digital photos.

 

Don’t fall into the trap of reminiscing about the times as you’re reviewing your pictures. Follow the 2 second rule and don’t hold on to the photos any longer.

Any photos stored in magnetic albums should be removed carefully and as soon as possible.

  • Sort your photos. For many people, putting their photos in a chronological order is the easiest. Some prefer to sort by themes.

Start with the year, then the month and event, if any, when sorting chronologically. Having a list of milestones like birth, graduation or wedding may be helpful.

If you prefer the themes approach, decide on your themes before you sort. It will make it a lot quicker!

  • Scan your photos. To preserve your pictures, you can also keep an electronic picture. Having them electronically, also lets you enjoy them in a digital photo frame, share them with relatives in an online photo book or post them on social media.

Here are some reviews for free and for premium online photo organisers.

Keep a backup of your digital photos like on an external hard drive or store your photos in the cloud, which have additional backups.

For the printed photos, store them in archival containers in a place with low humidity. Avoid basements and attics.

As we’re getting ready to come together for Christmas, I’m preparing a slideshow for my mom. I can’t wait to see how excited she’ll be when she sees the wifi-enabled photo frame. It’s a good thing she didn’t subscribe to this blog yet!

And when she’s enjoying that little gift and the memories on it, I’ll be updating the metatags to my December pictures (I’m sorting them chronologically)!

What are you going to do with all the photos you took over the years? Share how you keep yours organised by leaving a comment below. I’m looking forward to hearing what you do!

Until next time,
Agni

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