The average person takes about five photos a day – that’s 150 a month, nearly 2,000 a year. Can you imagine how that adds up over a lifetime? No wonder people struggle to organize their photos!
It’s important to have clear goals before you dive into this, so you need to ask yourself why you want your pictures organized. Do you want to be able to quickly find a particular photo? Are you trying to get rid of a bunch of boxes from your attic? No matter the reason, I can help you find the answer and determine your plan of attack.
I use the SPACE method to organize photos (for a recap of this method, check out the blog post: “How to organize like a pro”).
SORT
You may choose to divvy up your photos by year, month, event, location or person. One of my clients decided to sort by year, but realized that some of the old photos didn’t have a date stamp and she couldn’t get that specific. From ages and hair styles (love those 80’s perms!), she was able to sort in five year chunks.
PURGE
This is hard to do for photos! You don’t want to delete your loved ones! It’s why organizing genius Marie Kondo suggests you tackle photos last, after you’ve been practicing your decluttering skills for awhile. There are the easy ones to get rid of – the duplicates, the ones half-covered by thumbs, the ones that are too dark or blurry to see. Then it gets tough. For that family trip to the Grand Canyon you took a decade ago, do you want all 200 photos, or can you keep only the best three that make you smile and remember the highlights of the trip? The answer for everyone will be different. Top tip: consider putting some of the physical ones you purge in envelopes and posting to your friends and family as an awesome surprise for them!
ASSIGN AND CONTAINERIZE
For physical photos, you may want to put most of them in photo boxes. Figure out where you want to assign these boxes before choosing the design (if they will be displayed on shelves in your bedroom, pick something prettier!), but always look for acid-free, stackable ones that are easy to label. You may also want to pull out your favorite pictures and put them in photo albums. If you’re the creative sort, it can be a lot of fun (and a great family project) to make these on your own, but if not you can hire a helper. For digital photos, you may want to put them in clearly-labeled folders and sub-folders (like year, and then month or event) saved on your device, an external drive (I use a USB), or an online photo storage site like Shutterfly or Google Photos (don’t forget to back them up in a second location). You may also use your favorites to create a physical photo book. I use blurb for this and create one colorful album for each year, which are all assigned to a bookshelf in my living room. One of my clients struggled to narrow down the photos she wanted in frames around the house, so we created seasonal displays of framed photos that she can rotate every few months. The family Halloween snaps from over the years are particularly adorable!
EQUALIZE
Organizing photos is hard, so you don’t want to let it get away from you again! Better Homes & Gardens suggests, “To avoid a build-up of mediocre photos that you’ll have to deal with later, get in the habit of deleting duplicate or poor-quality shots right away.” They also suggest being tough on scenery shots and repetitive party pics.
Whatever your approach, when you organize your photos, be patient and kind to yourself. Remember that photos are one of the trickiest things to organize, so it is likely to take longer and be harder than you thought. Enlist a family member or good friend to do it with you (always more fun to laugh with someone when you come across some of your old fashion choices!), or hire a professional organizer to help you keep up the momentum. It will be worth it when you achieve those goals!