Photo Organizing Project

One major project on my to do list is to organize all of my photos, update the albums they are in and produce printed photo books of all the digital images we have. Sound like a lot? I’d say so. But with all these snow we’ve been getting this year, it’s a perfect indoor project.

This is one of those organization goals we only hope to accomplish.

If I were organized enough, I’d have my pictures in albums or If I could find time, I’d sort them all by year or When I have a free weekend, I’ll order some photo books of our pictures.

Sound like something you wish you could do?

Well I’m here to take on this massive photo organizing project once and for all and you can some along with me.

The Plan to Once and For All Organize my Photos

These steps to finally get my photo under control and in albums {printed or digital books} are based on 1. What I’m working with and 2. My photo organizing to do list.

First, here is what I’m working with:

• Eleven photo albums that date from before I was born {old family photos} to about 2008, when I got a digital camera. These albums are the binder kind with the self adhesive pages and are all organized by year and month. Yay for being somewhat organized! Clearly I had control of this in my younger years. Even if one of them was a puffy fabric covered album by aunt gave me and clearly I was into the navy, hunter green and maroon colors of the early 90’s 🙂 I put the painters tape on so I could see how much was in each binder.

However, as I suspected, a lot of the self adhesive pages are yellowing, the adhesive is wearing off and in general this isn’t a great way to store photos for the long term. Since I already have the binders, I’d like to minimize costs and reuse them somehow.

• I also have two containers and several file folders full of loose photos, some of which may be doubles of what is already in the albums, but many of which need to be dated and sorted to then be able to go into albums.

For my digital photos, what I already have is:

• Two hundred folders in iPhoto, somewhat organized by year. These include all of the photos I take for the blog and photos I take just for everyday memories.

• Several memory cards from the past, all filled with photos from about six years worth of events.
• Email messages with photos that people have sent to me. They need to get into one storage location.

And now, here is what I plan to do to finally tackle this massive photo organizing project, broken down in two parts. One for my printed photos and one for all my digital ones.

Printed Photos

1. Gather in one place all of the loose photos I have. This means pictures people send us of their children, some I’ve had printed that never made it into an album and old family photos that never got into an album in the first place.

2. Identify dates for all of those photos and organize them by year and month. This will probably take the longest of all the steps – someone bring me wine!
3. Select a new storage system for the photos I do have in albums. Order any necessary items. What I’m thinking for this is to order some of these and these photo archive pages, which are Polypropylene Photo Album Pages that fit into 3-ring binders. That way I can save money on buying new binders and the new pages will hold more or as many as I have in my current binders.
4. Apply the new storage system. i.e. put photos into the new storage system

What this will entail is, after I file and organize all of the loose photos I have, many of which fit in between all of these binders {I don’t know how they escaped at the time}, I’ll start transferring all of the photos in the current self adhesive binders into the new plastic sleeves. And then I can still keep them in the binders, whether I recover them or not. Or maybe get new binders in the long run?

Digital Photos

Now for the to do list for all of the digital photos.

1. Collect in one place all of the digital photos I have. This includes all the pictures people have emailed me that they took at our wedding, parties, and all of the pictures I have from my phone, cameras and old memory cards.
2. Sort all of the digital photos in order by year, month and event.
3. Identify a software to use to create printed photo albums.
4. Create printed photo albums from all of our digital photos that have never seen the light of day. Have albums made and display proudly in our home.

Lastly, relax and hope it hasn’t taken me three years to do all of the above.

So, what do you think of my photo organizing plan? Have you ever taken on a project like this? Have other ideas of how I can organize my old binders full of photos? Know of great products that will help? I’d love to hear your thoughts!