Organize Your Digital Photos (Day 25): 30 Day Organization Challenge

Today we are going to organize our digital photos. Be prepared, this is a process. But I PROMISE, it is worth it! We aren’t going to print them all or order our photo books. We are just going to get them ready for when we do want to order them or print them.

I am going to share the system I use, as well as the company I use. Take my suggestions and make them your own however you see fit. But this is a system I started a few years back and I am so glad I did. Also, I am not an affiliate for this company. I just like them, and they’ve been around since I started this process.

How I Organize My Digital Photos

Step one: The first thing I do, is break all of my digital photos down by year. I currently have over 6,000 photos on my phone, and it will do it for me. Before I had everything on my phone, I had SD cards. If you have a bunch of SD cards, this is going to take a little longer. But the goal is to separate them all by year.

Initially, I did this by uploading folders on my computer, and then backing them up on my Shutterfly account. I no longer upload them to my computer, only Shutterfly. In writing this post, I realized I am a couple years behind, so it’s time to upload photos. This is a tedious process. But here we go!

Step two: The second step is to remove them from your phone, once they have been uploaded. I had a hard time with this at first. When our daughter was little, I accidentally formatted photos on our first digital camera. I lost photos from a six-month period. This may not seem like a big deal, but it was from the time she was nine months to fifteen months. I even lost the photos of her first birthday. I was devastated. Since then, you could say I’ve been a little more cautious about deleting photos. So, if you’d like to hold onto them in multiple places, like a hard drive and the cloud, go for it!

Step three: This next step is optional, but I will do it every time. It makes printing the photos for scrapbooking or photo books, easier for me. I separate each year by months and or special events, trips, etc. Once all of your photos are uploaded, just grab your computer, sit down with the family watching a movie or something, and slowly work on it.

That’s it! I mean it’s a lot, but once you do this, you will be able to easily find whatever photo you are looking for. Tomorrow, we will take a look at our printed photos 🙂