Printed Photo Organization (Day 26): 30 Day Organization Challenge

Today we are going to finish off our photo organization by organizing our printed photos. Hopefully, today’s challenge is easier for you than yesterdays. But if you have boxes full of printed photos, just take your time.

My printed photo organization process is very much like my digital photo organization process. I like to start by categorizing every photo. This process is a little harder with our printed photos. You may not be able to remember what year each photo was taken. Unless you have the dates printed on the backs. That is okay. I usually just look at my kiddos or my husband and I pre-kiddos and guess.

I do not recommend dumbing all the photos out. Yes, that’s typically my go-to, but I am not a fan of being completely overwhelmed. When I’ve done this process, I like to work a little at a time. I grab a couple small bins or boxes, and slowly go through the photos, attempting to separate by year. This is kind of a fun trip down memory lane. Get the family involved if you want.

After you have separated all of your photos into years, roughly, you can go ahead and break them down further, if you’d like. If you are a scrapbooker, I do think it helps to break photos up by event or even time of year, but that’s just my preference.

Sounds easy enough, right? Well now that the easy work is done (just kidding), let’s go over how to store our photos. We want to avoid them all ending up in the same messy box!

Printed Photo Organization Systems

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In the past I have used shoe boxes, clear plastic bins, and even a bin that had writeable inserts, sold by a scrapbooking company. I like the shoe box idea because it’s free and I usually have extra clear bins laying around! But I LOVE anything I can label. I just ordered these clear photo boxes, and I cannot wait till they get here! I’ll make sure to upload a new photo once I have put them to use. Here are a few of my recommendations, if you’re looking for a fun system. BUT a shoe box works too 🙂