Organizational Tips: photo albums and scrapbooks

I take more photos than most people I know, so storing them can be difficult. Below outlines how I manage my photos. So far, this has worked best for me.

old photographs
I’m proud to say I’ve put all my old photos in chronological order inside acid-free, photo-safe albums. If you’ve yet to do this and have photos everywhere, it can be overwhelming! Start by getting all your photos in one big box. Then get file folders and label them by year. As you sort through the photos in the big box, drop them in the “year” folder they belong. Sometimes if the photos are old, this can be challenging – just make your best guess. Once separated by year, arrange the photos in each folder in chronological order. Again, this can be challenging. Usually clothing will be a hint as to time of year, and holidays are easy to sort. Try to group, too. For example, put all the school play photos together, all the family reunion photos together, all the Christmas photos together, etc. If you do the big events first, it’s easier to guess where the random photos fit in based off clothing, hair style, location, etc. Once all the photos are sorted, you can start putting them in albums. Don’t forget the importance of getting good quality, acid-free, photo-safe albums!

digital photos
Once I went digital, I stopped getting prints. It gets expensive, plus you have to find a place to store all the prints. Now I save my digital images (still in chronological order) by backing them up on CDs. The CDs are always labeled by date and topic (easier to find images later), and I keep them together in a CD binder. If you’re not going to go through the effort of keeping them all together in one safe place, what’s the point of backing them up? Seriously.

an exception to my rule
I do get some prints of the digital images. Each of my kids will have a set of scrapbooks (probably about 7 albums each, which gives you some idea of how many photos to include each year), which go from birth through high school graduation. This is an excellent example of how OCD I am. This is my gift to them – photos documenting their lives while they were under my care. I’m not suggesting you all do this. Photos are very important to me, and this is something special I wanted to do for my children. I only include the best photos from each year, focusing primarily on each of them, but also including both our immediate and extended family. Very few friends make it into these scrapbooks (exception: birthday parties). Family is forever. Friends come and go throughout our lives. Besides, they have yearbooks to remember their friends!

Again, this is just how I do it. It works for me. It won’t necessarily work for everyone.