Are you making new year’s resolutions? Are you good at keeping them? Honestly, I gave up on them. It is a bit of a funny story with me. Every year, especially when I was in school, I always said: “this year I am going to be more organised and my books will be tidy!”. Needless to say, it didn’t hold even one day.
I have never been an organised person and my desk was always a mess. I would only tidy it when it became too much of a mess, maybe once a month or even more.
But, there is one thing I am good at keeping organised. It did take me a while to find the system so I can keep it organised, but now it’s part of the routine.
That is – my photo collection.
Before digital cameras it was easy. You went on a holiday, used the 24 film, print it out in the shop, and put it in an album or made a scrapbook (I loved doing that).
When I first got my digital camera, it wasn’t easy at all because there were loads of photos to sort out. And when the smartphones came along, the number of photos I needed to sort out was overwhelming. But with time I found the easiest way to keep on top of it.
Here it is in just three steps:
- Set up a backup
- Regular decluttering
Back up and create a photo hub
The first and most important thing is to decide on where all the photos will be stored safely. Smartphones or tablets are not a safe place to keep all the photos. There are two main options, on a device or on a cloud. A device can be a desktop or an external hard drive. A cloud is a space on the internet where you can upload all your photos. The best practice is to have three types of backup, on two different media. for example, desktop, external hard drive, and Dropbox.
You only have to do it once. And when that is sorted, every so often you upload the photos from your phone or camera to the hub.
Regular decluttering
Every week or every month or every day if you prefer, go over your photos, sort them out and delete delete delete. Delete the duplicates, delete the ones that didn’t turn out so well, delete screenshots you no longer need. Back up and upload only the best ones to your hub. You can do it as often as you like. The more often you do it, the fewer photos you will need to go over and the less time it will take. You can do it while waiting in a queue or at the hairdresser. On a long journey (not when you are the driver) or when you are waiting for the kettle to boil. Going over a month worth of photos won’t take more than 10 minutes, I promise. The best way to do it is with your children, go over the photos together and relive those memories all over again.
Photo gifts
While you are sorting your photos, choose a few that you like the most. You can put them in a different folder or an album. You can highlight them as favourites and then print them out so you can enjoy them! You can create photo gifts for your family, for example, a mug with a photo of your children to the grandparents. Print a photo on a cushion. hang photos on the wall or by your bedside, what’s the point of taking all those pictures if we don’t enjoy them? My favourite is creating photobooks. Remember how fun it was when you were little and you had photo albums to look through. I remember looking at them over and over again. Once a year I create a photobook with all our best memories of the year. It’s so much fun to look through it and the children can just pick it up from the shelf and enjoy them too.
There is a lot more to say about those three steps but for now, these are the basic steps to keep your photo collection safe and clean
If you would like to know more about this, you are welcome to contact me here
