HELP! I Have a Mountain of Photos!
Notes from a video I made for some virtual organizing clients:
Photographs are one of my favorite categories to organize. Throughout my life, I have created countless photo albums for myself, my family and my friends. Large, ornate albums, small albums, digital albums, full-page photo books and archival photo boxes. For me, it is meaningful work and great fun.
But for many people, photo organizing is stressful and overwhelming. When we first meet our clients, many of them express guilt and shame over the mountains of photos they have taken or received but have never organized.
Well, that just breaks my heart. So, my team and I help families find and organize photos in order to create photo projects that fit each client’s goals, resources and values. Here are a few of the steps we take…
Assess your resources and values
Anytime you’re organizing your space, whether it’s your office, kid’s rooms, whole house, your wardrobe, anyhting, it's helpful to think about your resources.
How much time do I have to tackle this?
How much space do I have?
What is my budget?
What kind of organizing supplies do I need?
Ask yourself these questions and then create a process that feels good to you and is manageable and sustainable. Or, get help with your process. There may be family members who are interested and willing. Or perhaps a group of friends can support one another in making progress. Of course, you can also hire a pro to do it with or for you.
While resources are a key point of organizing – you have to know what is available to you – another key is figuring out what your values are, which will give your organizing more direction.
Are you extremely sentimental and want to keep photos from every life stage, every birthday and every trip?
Are you a minimalist who is satisfied with maybe one or two photos of each member of the family?
Build up your organizing muscle
Usually, when I’m working with a client, we’ll organize photographs and memorabilia last because they can be time consuming and emotional. You kind of have to build up the muscle to do it by organizing other things around your house first. I think that’s a concept that Marie Kondo made well known.
Create a system
There are many philosophies and methods for getting organized. Rather than asking every client to follow one particular system, we utilize a variety of best practices to customize individualized action plans. Different things work for different people, right?
For example, I like to organize my photos annually, in the winter months, between Christmas and Valentine’s Day. There’s just something about cozying up with some hot tea while the snow falls and going through all my photos. Organize your photos however it makes sense to you - by holiday, year, subject, etc. Whatever is enjoyable or simply makes sense to you.
Decide what you’re going to digitize. Digitizing photos is a great way to take a large number of photos that are taking up a ton of space and condense them into a file that takes up virtually none. We use a photo scanner that scans photos really quickly and saves them into a folder on the computer.
If you want to safely store digital files online, I can’t recommend Forever photo service enough. I spent two whole years scouring the internet for the best platform to store photos on. I really love my photos so I’m super picky, but I am really comfortable with Forever and would recommend it to any client of mine. In fact, after using Forever for a while, I become more and more comfortable with tossing physical copies of photos because I am so confident in Forever’s quality and security.
Organize by category
It can be really fun around the holidays to pass around photo boxes and enjoy all of your old photos. If you organize them by holiday in different photo boxes, it might be a treasured tradition to go back every year and have a look at them.
Do you want hard copy, digital, or no photo albums?
Whether you want to keep a minimum or maximum number of photos, there are organizing options to meet your needs. Forever has reps that can help you create digital albums and other projects. And if you want to have an album made for you, we can recommend album specialists who create photo albums that are so gorgeous you can use them as coffee table décor.
Share with family & friends?
Do you want to take time to share photos with family and friends? It may slow down your progress, but if including sharing in the process makes it heartwarming for you, think about it. Might you have photos others would want? Would they want to join you to sort and/or create albums? Or perhaps they would welcome a lovely framed photo? However, keep in mind that many people are overwhelmed with photos, and giving them some of yours may not be best for either of you.
What feels right for YOU?
So, think about what is best for you. What will decrease your stress and shrink the size of your photo mountain? Create a process you enjoy or find a pro to do it for you based upon your interests, values and resources.
At one time Pinky Jackson had over 300 photo albums. Her collection is now much smaller, increasingly digital, and much easier to enjoy! Contact her at pinkyjackson.com to get help with your mountain of photos.
Photo Credit @frelodesign
