If you’re anything like I am, you’ve probably spent some of your quarantine time tackling some of the long-neglected tasks around your house. We’ve scrubbed baseboards, cleaned out closets, weeded the yard, matched all the rogue socks, and sanitized EVERY single surface a million times. Another daunting task that is on a LOT of peoples’ to-do list? Organizing your photos.
It’s overwhelming! In this age of easily-accessible camera phones, the sheer number of image files we create and store is off the charts. And let’s be honest – a good chunk of them aren’t even worth keeping. Couple that with the boxes of physical prints from childhood or ones you’ve inherited from family and it’s a wonder that we can find anything these days. Don’t wait until you’re hunting for images for that yearbook ad or bachelorette roast slideshow . . . take some time while you’re at home to organize your photos. I’ll break this down into two parts: physical prints and digital files.
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Organizing Your Photos: Physical Prints
Digital cameras and camera phones weren’t readily available until the early 2000’s. From the dawn of photography until then, images lived only in a printed format. Processing was expensive and took time, and therefore we really cherished the limited number of exposures on each roll of film. Even so, if you grew up in a family with avid photographers (like I did), you probably have decades-worth of boxes of loose prints lying around. And while it can be fun to go down the rabbit-hole and reminisce about your parents’ amazing outfits from the 70’s, you’re never going to find what you’re looking for unless you organize!
Organizing your photos is time-consuming, and you have to touch every single print. However, once you get this done, you’ll never have to do it again (and your kids will thank you). I like mine to be somewhat chronological. I’ll go through one box at a time and try to put the print into a pile by decade or specific timeframe (like “my mom’s childhood” or “high school” or “married before kids”, etc.). Then I go through specific piles to eliminate any duplicate photos or just BAD ones (you don’t really need to keep the blurry blinkers or 19 copies of your kid’s 2nd grade class photo). It’s truly okay to throw away what doesn’t spark joy – Marie Kondo would be proud. Or better yet, consider sending the ones you don’t need to family and friends who might appreciate them.
Once you have determined which are keepers, you’ll need to decide how to store them. Are you going to archive them back in a box, frame some amazing ones you forgot that you had, or otherwise put them on display? My personal preference is to select my favorites and put them into a glass box that I keep on my living room shelf. That way I can flip through them anytime I want. The rest go into a series of archival boxes that I store in my closet (they are easy to grab anytime we have a hurricane evacuation, which has happened each of the last 4 summers). However you decide to store them, make sure that the material is archival and acid-free to ensure that your prints will stand the test of time. Also, store them away from sunlight in a dry area of your home – attics and garages are a no-no!!
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Organizing Your Photos: Digital Files
Step two in organizing your photos is to take a look at all the digital image files you have. You probably have old CDs, USB drives, memory cards, not to mention the thousands of images on your phone and maybe even in the cloud someplace. The key to organization here is getting them all into one place where you can sort and preview them. My preferred method of digital photo organization is Adobe Lightroom.
My method is pretty straightforward: dump every digital image I have onto a series of external hard drives (I have a huge volume of images, so I have one hard drive for each year, but depending on the amount you have you could get away with one or two). Import everything into Lightroom and you can see a thumbnail of every image that you have on that drive – and it orders them chronologically. You can even tag images upon import (for example, I’d use the tag “Disney 2014” when importing images from the memory card with photos from that vacation) so that you can use a keyword search later.
I have my phone’s camera roll set up to upload images automatically into my Dropbox account when I open the app (eliminating unnecessary photos immediately has really helped cut down on the collection of bad images to sort through). I can import these images into my Lightroom catalog as well, so that I can see all my digital images in one place. There is a little learning curve, but the time spent setting up a Lightroom catalog is so worthwhile! There are a lot of online tutorials on how to get started, but the most important thing is simply to start.
Organizing Your Photos: Backups
It’s also very important to back up your digital files regularly. I have a Mac, so I use TimeMachine to ensure that all my photos are saved on another external hard drive (separate from the originating drive). There are also cloud storage systems like CrashPlan that you can use. Whether physical or on the cloud, a system for backup is critical and it don’t have to cost a lot.
The best backup to your digital files, however, is simply the physical print. Whether you choose to print off 4×6 prints to keep in a box on your living room table or take the time to craft an amazing album commemorating a special vacation or event, there is nothing like holding a memory in your hands. This way you won’t have to boot up your computer, charge your phone or rely on electricity to enjoy your precious family memories ☺️