We live in a world of excess, surrounded by pounds and pounds of unnecessary stuff.
As much as we love keeping our memories close, photographs are one of those things that keep piling up.
Whether you have physical photos stored in bins or megabytes of pictures on the computer, it’s time to declutter your world.
It can be overwhelming to sort through sentimental items, and hard to think about throwing away memories, but the truth is just because you let something go does not mean you’re throwing away the memory with it.
And once you start the process you’ll realize how much these items weighed you down.
Our tried and true process will finally give you the tools to effectively organize your photo collection so you can showcase the best ones in beautiful photo albums.
We’ll go over how to declutter your space so you can live lighter and live better.
Let’s get organizing!
Organizing digital Photos
Digital photos are great in the sense that they don’t take up much physical space.
But using up all that memory takes a toll on your devices.
And more importantly, it’s nearly impossible to find the photo you’re looking for.
Most pictures today are kept on some sort of digital device. This can be your laptop, desktop, cell phone, or even a pile of USBs.
Either way, it’s probably too many photos to fathom.
It’s not uncommon to have 10,000+ images stored across all your devices.
After you finish your digital decluttering, you might even notice your computer runs a lot faster!
And just think.
One day, things like JPEGs and PNGs will become extinct.
By making an organizational plan now, you can ensure their safekeeping in the future.
Step 1: Prepare and Begin
This is going to be quite an undertaking.
Set aside a good chunk of time, grab some coffee (or wine), and let's get started!
The end goal is to have a few images that truly bring you joy, grouped together by year and life event.
This is much easier to do with digital images since they already have time stamps.
As you go through each folder or album, delete all the doubles, out-of-focus photos, or needless landscape images (unless they’re extra epic). If they’re not, they gotta go.
There’s no reason to keep a photo of a random park you walked through 3 years ago.
This first step will cut your collection almost in half!
Step 2: Group by Year
Now it’s time to group the photos together by year.
Depending on the device you’re using, the timestamp could be in a few different places, but a quick Google search can get you right on track.
Place each year in it’s own designated folder.
If you have several folders from one year, that’s okay.
Just group those folders together inside 1 folder that’s labeled the year they were taken.
Step 3: Categorize
Now that you know what year everything was taken, it’s time to separate them by categories, or life events, within that year.
Popular categories include:
Birthdays
Vacations
Weddings
Births
First days of school
Etc.
You have the freedom to categorize them however you want. Just make sure that each one has it’s own folder.
Step 4: Which Ones Bring You Joy?
Now comes the hard part; forever deleting your photos.
If you’re like most people, you probably have 50+ images of the same event. You really only need 5-10. Choose the very best photos from that event that truly bring you the most joy and nostalgia. The rest can honestly just go.
Congratulations! You’re organized! How much better does that feel?
Organizing physical Prints
We can use the same step-by-step process to organize physically printed photos as well, though it’ll be a little different. Let’s go.
Step 1: Gather photos Together
First of all, know that this process might take you a few days, depending on how many images you have to sort through.
But it’ll be oh so worth it when you can let go of all those things taking up your space.
Go through your entire home and grab all your photographs and bring them to an open space where you can easily organize everything.
This should be a place where you can leave the photos lying around for a couple of days until you’re finished.
Whether it’s a guest bedroom you can close the door to, or somewhere that can be blocked off from the kids and pets.
Step 2: toss duplicates
Once again you’re going to throw away the duplicates, unfocused images and scenery pictures. This time you’ll be pitching the negatives as well, along with all those cheap Walgreens folders.
Step 3: group by year
Now that the situation is more manageable, it’s time to group them by year again.
This will be a lot trickier if the year isn’t written on the back. If it’s not, that’s okay. Most people don’t think to do it at the time.
This just means you’ll have to do some sleuthing.
An educated guess will do. Look at the clothes, hairstyles, furniture, whatever detail in the picture helps you to remember what year it might have been taken.
As you go through them, remember to keep the years separated in their own individual folder, container, or designated pile on the floor.
Remember to keep the space untouched at all costs. This isn’t something you want to do twice!
Step 4: group by category
Now group them by category again; within the designated year.
Step 5: let go!
We’re back to the difficult step.
Within each category, you’re allowed to keep 5-10 photos that bring you the most joy.
All the other ones need to be thrown away.
I’m here to tell you that you don’t need 30 angles of your child’s first birthday cake. Two will suffice.
Step 6: Your Photos are Organized - Now What?
Now it’s time to put these pictures in an organized and pleasant-to-look-at space.
For digital images, there are sites you can use to store them.
Some even allow you to write notes about each one, and others allow you to print them out into small nifty photo albums.
These sites are great for digital image albums:
If you have printed photos, then you finally have a great excuse to go to Target’s photo album section.
If you’re feeling crafty, feel free to turn it into a scrapbook.
Do whatever you want with them, just make sure it’s organized and has a designated spot in your home.
Now that you’ve got a collection of photos that only bring you joy, it’s time to live lighter and live better!
