Guest Post: Fresh Tips for Organizing your Family’s Photos

I am honored and excited to welcome Kate Hare today, who is stopping by to share some great tips for getting all of those family photos organized!

Here she is now!

Gone are the days of needing to be stingy with pictures; no longer are we limited by the cost of film or the time it takes to get a roll developed at the drugstore. But thanks to the explosion in photography-related technologies, our generation is now faced with a new problem – trying to keep all those digital photo files from getting out of hand.

  

Whether you’ve got memory sticks stuffed into shoe boxes, files clogging up your hard drive – or even shots strewn across social networks to share with friends and family – it’s time to get your collection in order once and for all. After all, there's no organizing project that will give you a greater sense of satisfaction or a more wonderful way to show and share your family’s story for years to come. 

Here are a few of my fresh tips for getting a grip on the situation if you’re in digital photo overload:  

1. Have an objective. Most of us get knee-deep into organizing and then lose momentum without a clear focus. Decide beforehand what your goals are, and then make a plan (or plans) of attack. Say, for example, you want to get better about sharing recent shots of your new baby as she’s growing. You’ll want to focus on finding an automated method for uploading and sharing, versus a longer-term project, such as organizing and creating an heirloom of family vacation photos.
2. Break-ups are good. I’m not talking about the romantic kind, but the need for a large project like this to be broken into bite-sized pieces. Don’t try to attack it all in one afternoon; you’ll run out of time {and motivation} and before you know it, another year will go by, along with several thousand more images to be added to your stockpile. Instead, try dividing photos by type {print, digital, etc.}, theme {college, baby, etc.} or passage of time {one year, five years, etc.} and tackle a section at a time.
3.  When in doubt, go digital. Not everyone is on board with uploading the entire family archive to the web, but it’s actually easier and more secure than you think – plus, working with one format streamlines the process. Keep prints on hand if you like hard copies for frames and albums, but consider scanning and housing your collection online for easy access and safekeeping in the event of an unforeseen disaster {house fire, flood, etc.}.
4. Edit with abandon. Repeat after me: The best tool for organizing photos is the delete button! OK, if even the thought of tossing out one shot of your family’s smiling faces sends you into a guilt-induced panic, consider this: Would you rather look at 25 gorgeous shots of an event, or slog through hundreds of so-so ones? {And as a bonus, use this time to fix up borderline shots with free editing software where you can remove red-eye, crop and brighten to give new life to old photos}
5. Don’t just sit there...do something! Finally, remember that your photos are special, so treat them as such. Invest in organizing, and then think about what you can do to showcase those memories. Create photo books, rotate your favorites in frames, get creative with collages, share in an online scrapbook and much, much more. Alone, they are captured moments, but together, they are an important narrative of your family’s time together.

Have other tips for organizing your most prized memories? We would love to hear them in the comments below.

Many thanks again to Kate for stopping by with some great tips and ideas to get us motivated to preserve and organize our most cherished photos!