Organizing My Photos (How I Stay Caught Up, part 1)

I stay caught up on preserving my photos and memories.  It’s true!  I know that puts me in a small minority, but it’s a great place to be!  I’m very passionate about helping people join me in that Consistent & Successful Memory-Keepers minority, so that’s why this month on #familyhistoryfriday each week I’m going to share exactly HOW I do that.  Organizing your photos is the big first step.

Because we’re inundated with photos these days, it can be hard to even know what we have or where it is.  Organizing your pictures is the first important step to preserving them.  This video I made especially for Evolve! readers shows my actual method for organizing my photos on my computer.  This method helps me sort through what I have so that I can get rid of extras and duplicates (or very similar photos).  This method also makes it easy for me to find my photos, too!  Let me walk you through my process:

UPDATE 2022:  Find additional tutorial videos on photo organization here, including this 3-part series that covers the difference between storing and preserving photos along with 10 tips for consistent success:

I’ve written a few times about narrowing down photos– finding {extras} and sorting so that what you’re left with is do-able, or something you’re able to preserve.

If you take 100 pictures and you preserve 100 pictures, you’re set.  If you take 100 pictures and leave them on your phone or computer and then take another 100 and do the same thing and another 100, and you keep going that way and feel pretty overwhelmed and you don't preserve any of them, you may need to just pick your favorites to preserve.

If it’s a choice between being so overwhelmed with the amount of photos you have that you never preserve any and just preserving your favorites, pick your favorites.  {Preserving some is much better than none.}

Organizing and storing your photos digitally is all well and good, but always remember the bigger picture:  Preserving them with details (names, dates, memories) is the goal.  A nameless photo doesn’t mean anything to anyone.  A jpeg file may get corrupted.  Computers crash.  The printed photo is what’s meaningful.  Organizing your photos is the first step to getting there.

Next week we’ll look at the second important step to avoid getting behind on preserving your pictures:  finding a method you will love and do.  I suggest something {addicting}, so stay tuned.

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This post was originally published at www.livegrowgive.org on September 8, 2017, by Jennifer Wise.  Find more #familyhistoryfriday posts by clicking the hashtag below next to Labels.