Photo & Story Treasures: February 2024

You're not alone. If you've got photos on your phone, your computer, in Google Drive and Dropbox (and maybe some other places too), it can be a little overwhelming to organize them. And it's a common problem.

Luckily, it's a common problem that can be solved easily!

I accidentally changed someone's life a few months ago with this idea for how to get them all in one place easily, so get ready to let it change yours, too.

If you're feeling overwhelmed with your photos because they're in too many places to locate and handle (or overwhelmed with your photos for any reason, really), it can be easy to get stuck in overwhelm.

You've probably never thought about this, but Photo Overwhelm is dangerous.

Why Photo Overwhelm is Dangerous

When you're overwhelmed with photos, you miss out on all the good-for-you benefits that interacting with your photos gives you (which have been proven in studies, by the way).

You miss out on increased happiness and relaxation. You miss out on increased perspective, purpose, and belonging.

You miss out on decreased stress.

So getting out of Photo Overwhelm is a really big deal for your own well-being!

Why Having Your Photos in One Location Matters

You probably don't need to be told this, but having your photos and memories scattered in multiple locations contributes immensely to overwhelm. It also makes organizing your photos much, much harder (maybe even impossible).

It's so important to simplify your photos by having them in one location.

When your photos are in one location, you'll be able to find them. And see them. And share them. And enjoy them. And use them.

Think about it this way: Imagine trying to organize a child's toys. Except the Legos don't have a bin and the dolls are in the basement but the doll clothes are at Grandma's house.

If you have one toy cabinet or closet with different drawers, shelves, or compartments, you can keep everything in one location, and everything has a place to go. When you want to find the puzzles, you know where they are.

It's pretty similar with photos. If some are on an external hard drive and some are in Google and some are still on your camera, you won't be able to find a photo, let alone know what you have.

NOTE: I am a Forever affiliate (a decision I made because I love it so much), so you will find affiliate links in this post, from which I earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.

How to Easily Get Your Photos into One Consummate Location

Remember how I told you that I changed someone's life with this suggestion? Here's what happened.

I was teaching a photo organizing class, and I was talking about the best way out there to store and organize your photos in the cloud. (That's only one way you should preserve your photos, by the way--experts recommend two digital ways, one onsite/at-home and one offsite/cloud, as well as one way in print!)

That "best way" is Forever Storage. There's nothing else like it.

As we talked about organizing your photos in Forever Storage where they're private, secure, triple-backed up, and guaranteed for your lifetime plus 100 years, one of the gals in the class lamented that her photos are in so many places that it would be super challenging to get them all in one place in order to upload them all to Forever Storage.

She asked if I had any advice.

I told her to go the other direction. Instead of getting them in one place first, just open a Forever account (it's free), then go to all your different devices and open your Forever account on each one. Then upload photos to your Forever account from each device.

So easy! It solved her problem in a snap.

Remember that advice I mentioned from photo experts?

Once all her photos are in her Forever Storage, they are saved in Digital Way #1--they're preserved offsite (in the cloud) in case of onsite disaster (anything from a flood to a computer crash).

From there, it was so easy for her to download her photos to one computer. And just like that, her photos were stored in Digital Way #2 (onsite/at-home).

One thing that is important to know is that downloading your own photos from Forever Storage is free (which you don't always get with some cloud storage companies!) and you get your photos back at full resolution, meaning the same quality you took them at. (Some other cloud storage companies store lower-resolution versions of your images, lowering the quality.)

She didn't have to figure out how to transfer all her photos between devices. She just accessed Forever Storage from all her various devices and uploaded what was on them.

It was a simple way to get all her photos into one place, both in the cloud and later onto one computer.

If you need some help with organizing on your computer, be sure you don't miss the One Magical Resource section at the end of this article!

Your Photo Solution in Two Easy Steps

Let me walk you through the 2 easy steps you'll take to do this same thing. Getting your photos into one location is the first step to eliminating your overwhelm and allow you to find photos easily so that you can love, share, and enjoy them.

First, open your free Forever account here. Your free account comes with 2 GB of free photo storage, so start filling it up! It also comes with a $20 coupon, which we'll use in Step 2. This tutorial I made on how to upload and organize your photos in Forever Storage will probably be very helpful. You can also watch this video on editing photos in Forever Storage and this one on how to use the "tags" tool to find a photo fast!
Second, use your $20 coupon to buy additional Forever Storage. The great thing about purchasing it is that you OWN it, so you're not "renting" it with monthly fees. You'll get additional Forever Storage at this link where you can also determine how much you need. Click on any package and you'll see details on how many photos you can store. For example, 25 GB is 3,750-12,500 photos, depending on the file size of the photo. I ended up buying a lot more storage once I got my old VHS tapes digitized and wanted to save them Forever, too. You can choose a one-time payment or 24 monthly payments, but either way you OWN the cloud storage and can access it from any computer, phone, tablet, etc.

Yet another perk of Forever Storage for your photos and videos!

People often ask me for advice on how much photo storage to buy. It's hard to say since file sizes differ and some people take more pictures than others, but I would say if you are an average photo taker and you've been taking pictures regularly for 10 or 20 years, you probably need 50 GB. This will be different if you also want to store videos in Forever Storage because video files are bigger.

You can buy some now and buy some later--whatever works for you--but notice that it's cheaper per GB the bigger the package you can get. I heard someone say once that you can't buy too much photo storage since we're always taking more pictures, which is a good thing to consider.

Also, once you've purchased Forever Storage in any amount, you may want to check out this great way to keep getting free Forever Storage.

Once you've gotten the app and Forever Storage, you can start uploading and organizing your photos. Here's a quick tutorial on how to do that:

Another Benefit of Eliminating Overwhelm

And there you have it! If your photos are in too many places, organizing them can be overwhelming--so much so that you might not do it! So use Forever Storage as your secret weapon to get your photos into one place and get them organized so you can access them, see them, share them, and use them.

Then you're ready to finish up that expert advice we looked at earlier. From Forever Storage, you can easily put those photos (and even videos using this fun method) into photo-memory book pages! Then you'll always have access to your memories without worrying if your book is low on battery.

Forever Print has something for everyone, from quick and easy books to fancy digital scrapbooking, so find your favorite kind here:

And then tell someone you know about this amazing solution! It really can change everything.

And One Magical Bonus Resource

For a more magic-like solution, give the Historian software a try! Historian is a tool for organizing photos and videos, and it has some great editing tools that are easy to use, too. (There's a free 30-day trial of it, too, so you can see if you like it.)

If you have digital files all over the place, you will love watching Historian put them all in chronological order for you. You can sort into Cabinets (like folders) from there, and you can apply the facial recognition tool as well!