How to Organize Your Photos

Like almost every other shutterbug I have been lured into the local craft store and spent a hundred dollars on all the basic scrapbooking needs in the hopes of preserving my own glossy photos in a memory book. Maybe scrapbooking is not for me, but I hope to at least get all my photos organized so that someday the piles and piles of Kodak envelopes can all be handed over to someone else who is capable of the task.

The following are some tips for arranging your own collection of photos.

Arrange Your Photos in Segments: There are two reasons for this. The first is to avoid getting overwhelmed by the huge number of photos you might find yourself dealing with. Second, because you are arranging photos and not socks you are more likely to go slowly through your content and reminisce over some of the photos. Dividing your organizing into segments allows you to have the time you need to sort out photos without feeling rushed.

Store All Your Photos in One Spot: The one and only album I did finish had an entire roll of pictures omitted because I did not find the developed photos till two months after I had already filled the pages. To avoid this from happening to you decide on one spot where you will keep all your photos organized. Go through the entire house, all drawers, boxes and shelves and gather your photos for organizing. Even if this will take several days, get them all together, stash them all in a drawer if you have to until they are all together and ready for organizing.

Arrange Photos into Categories: Once you have all your photos gathered up spend an initial couple of hours sorting all your photos into categories. Since you will be dealing with a lot of photos at this point keep the categories very general. To begin start with Holidays, Vacations, Celebrations, Friends and Family pictures. On a separate sitting you can begin to break each of the photos in the categories down into more specific events, but remember to do all of the organizing in segments.

Store Photos In Boxes or Simple Albums: Buy several photo boxes or simple store all photo albums till the scrabbooking fairy godmother comes along to help you get your memory books done. Depending on the number of photos you have decide which storage option will hold more photos in the smallest amount of space and take the least amount of time to fill for you. Whichever you opt for make sure you buy several of the same item so that you will keep your storage system as uniform as possible.

These tips should at least get all your photos organized enough so that you can find last years vacation photos when company comes over. If you end up on a roll you might even get one memory book done like I did.