Pictures, pictures, piles of pictures… Do you have them? Baby photos that haven’t made it into baby books, pictures from your latest family vacation, pictures that you inherited from your mom, pictures that other people have sent to you at Christmas. What in the world are you to do with all those piles? No one’s even enjoying them at this point. And, I must confess, I have a pile of pictures from my youngest that need to go into a scrapbook and she just turned 12. 🙁 But I gave up the scrapbooking ghost years ago and just haven’t been able to force myself to finish that last 1/2 of the book. Someday… At least her baby book is done.
If you are struggling with piles of photos, consider implementing these 7 organizing tips to organize photos:
Organizing Tip #1:
Decide what you ultimately want to do with your photos. Do you want to slide them easily into albums? Do you want to store them in photo-safe boxes, scan them or do you want to scrapbook them (more power to you sister!)? I ultimately chose to slide mine into photo-safe albums so we could at least see and enjoy them.
Organizing Tip #2:
Decide if you want help or not. Do you want to hire a professional organizer to go through photos with you or do you want to tackle them on your own? To find a professional organizer in your area visit the National Association of Professional Organizers.
Organizing Tip #3:
Purchase the supplies that you will need to get the job done.
Organizing Tip #4:
Schedule time into your calendar to work on your pictures. I have found that working on my own photos is a task that is easy to push to the back burner. If you plan for it in your calendar, then you are preserving that time as a commitment.
Organizing Tip #5:
Choose the best, let go of the rest. Go through your photos and let go of duplicates (you can give them to someone who cares), let go of fuzzy photos, let go of photos that have no meaning to you.
Organizing Tip #6
Decide if you want to organize photos by year, by event or by holiday. This is really personal preference and depends on your goals. Perhaps you want to have an album that’s all Christmas photos. Then put all your Christmas photos together separated by year. I personally organize mine by year putting all the pictures of events in chronological order throughout the year.
Organizing Tip #7
Enjoy your photos whether they are scanned into folders on the computer or in a beautiful book you can hold in your hands!
