Manage Family Photos (Love Home Challenge)

Disclosure: Any post may contain links to my shop or affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission from any purchase you make. All opinions about products I use are my own. Read the full disclosure and Privacy Policy HERE.

This is the last project of this year’s Love Home Challenge!

If I had an area of weakness in organizing, I’d say it is family photos. I was so good at it, until I realized I didn’t like my way of doing things, and didn’t take the time to create a new way. The perfectionist in me went full all or nothing, and in this case nothing. This was back in 2011. I never got any momentum up to really try again. And it has been 8 years. 8 years! I’ve had a child born in the last 8 years. This project being selected may or may not be for completely selfish reasons.

If you’re like me, you’ve got printed pictures from long ago in albums here and there, framed here and there, and then bunches and bunches stored on multiple digital devices. Sound familiar?

The ideas I’ve generated are taking some of the big tasks of managing family pictures, and breaking them up into small achievable tasks. I don’t expect you or me to finish organizing all our family pictures in 2 weeks, but goodness gracious, we can make a good start. And a good start is even more of a miracles since it tends to be the hardest part.

You in? Come on, let’s do this thing!

Ideas for Managing Family Photos :

• Download digital files from different devices into one place (like a safe online storage, so you can always access from anywhere.)
• Every time you think about playing a game or getting on Facebook on your phone, clean up your photos on your phone instead.
• Pick a year, gather all digital photos of that year together in one place digitally. Sort through photos – delete redundancies, bad photos, etc. Put into chronological or “event” order. Create a digital folder for this year that is as organized as possible. Print only your favorites. (Repeat for more years, if possible.)
• Scan old printed pictures and create organized online storage as you go (sort by year, then by month or event inside of the year folder).
• Create (or finish) special albums for your children or other family members.
• Organize large prints and professional photos into large binders or large portfolio folders.
• Clean up old albums.
• Send in old video tapes and other old media into services that will turn these things into modern digital storage.
• Print photo books or print individual pictures into albums. Highly cull and curate these pictures. Now that we have digital photo storage, we don’t need EVERYTHING printed.
• If you are holding on to old devices just for the media they contain, transfer the media to your current device(s) and online digital storage, then recycle the old electronics.

Now choose what you’ll do!

Don’t try to do it all. Make a list of the most meaningful tasks – what will make you feel accomplished and breathe a little easier?

Now, choose 1-3 things that are left that will make the biggest difference to you. (Only do more than 3 if you’re list has some quick and easy things!) Start with the most important thing in case you only get 1 thing done.

As for me: Since I really want this an ongoing personal project for me through the holidays (in my spare time), because I really want to finish this sooner than later … I will be making a list of everything I need to do, then putting that list in an order that makes sense. Like, it will be easier to create special albums for my kids AFTER I’ve sorted all the years digitally. Then, I’m just going to start at the beginning of the list and work my way through it. Make sense? Maybe that will help you know where to start.

And as always, please tell me in the comments what you plan to do in the next 2 weeks. I love cheering you on!

From my home to yours,
Mary

PIN THIS POST