Photo Organization in Three Easy Steps: Tackle the Mountain of Disorganized Photographs in Your Life

Determine where you want to do your photo sorting. The kitchen table might look like the right place, but try to find a space that you can occupy over the next couple weeks without having to clear off the workspace at the end of each session. A spare bedroom with a table set up in the corner or even your craft or office area might work. Clear off the large work area and prepare it for your organizational project.

Find your photos. Dig them out of the closet, pull them out of the drawers and cabinets, unpack the boxes stashed under the bed or in the attic. If you are a digital photographer, now is the time to get those photos developed/printed so you have something tangible to work with instead of a bunch of CD's. Bring every photo together into one place. Put all your gathered photos into 1 large box (or more if you need them) - leave them in their photo albums, leave them in the photo developer envelopes or the photo storage boxes you had them in originally. At this stage we're just gathering photos - no sorting allowed!

Step 2 - The rough sort

Decide how you want your photos to be sorted. There is no right or wrong way to sort, figure out what works best for you and the photos you have collected. Here are some ideas

Chronologically (1950's, 1960's, 1970's and so on)

By Family Group (Smiths, Jones, Grandma's side, Grandpa's side and so on)

By Individual Person (each sibling, each child and so on)

By Event (Christmas, Birthdays, Family Reunions and so on)

Once you've decided which categories will work best for your photos, write each category on a separate sheet of paper or sticky note. Then attach those signs to the work table where you'll be doing the sort - or if it's easier for you, use small boxes with the notes attached. (Imagine 6 shoeboxes lined up on your table with sticky notes attached to the front.)

Now start a rough sort of your photos. Go quickly through this stage and simply shuffle photos into the box where they belong. Don't dwell on each picture; just quickly place it where it belongs. If you are sorting chronologically don't try to place photos in order within each decade - just throw the photo into the box where it belongs. We'll do a more detailed sort later. You'll have time to reminisce over pictures later too, don't do that now. Right now your goal is to quickly sort through the big pile and begin creating smaller manageable piles. Speed is the name of the game with this step!

Step 3 - Detailed Sorting

We are in the home stretch of this project. The hard parts are over and now the enjoyable parts are ahead.

You should have several piles or shoeboxes of roughly sorted photos. Your task now is to do a detailed sorting of these individual piles. Here are some suggestions on how to tackle this task:

If you've sorted chronologically in decade format, you can now further sort the photos by the individual year in that decade. For instance, begin working with a single decade of photos, the 1980's. Now group all photos taken in 1980 together and all photos in 1981 together and so on. Once you have the individual years together it'll be easy to sort by month within these small piles. You can either spread out on a large table or work surface, or use a pre-labeled accordion filing system from the office supply store and sort into each month. Drill down even further to put the individual months into chronological order as well.

If you've sorted by event, you can then further sort those events chronologically as described above. You can also use the same chronological sorting system if your original system was by person or family unit.

This is the fun part! This is the time to relax and reminisce over your photographs. Gather the family to help you with this step and take the time to tell stories to your children about the people in the photos you're sorting. Maybe even turn on the tape recorder or video camera so you'll have a record of the stories for future generations.

This isn't going to be a quick process. It'll take time and patience to get through all those photos. That's OK though. Just take your time and have fun!