Step-by-Step Guide to Organizing Your Print Photos
If you're feeling overwhelmed by your photo clutter, you're not alone. Join the millions of people stressed out by boxes and bags of disorganized print photos, negatives, slides, and other media.
Photo chaos can be incredibly stressful. We want to save, savor, and share our memories with our close family and friends, but often don’t know where to start. The guilt of seeing our photos languishing in attics, garages, or storage facilities, fading with each passing day, can be overwhelming. Moreover, knowing that these irreplaceable memories are at risk of being lost to natural disasters like fires, tornadoes, or hurricanes adds to the anxiety.
Additionally, every time we need that one or two photos for a special project or to share, it turns into a frustrating scavenger hunt. Imagine how wonderful it would be to easily and quickly find the perfect memory to share at our child’s wedding, graduation party, or Uncle Otto’s memorial?
This problem is common, and the solution hasn't been clear - until now. It’s time to tackle photo clutter and ensure our memories are preserved and cherished for years to come.
Tips to Getting your Print Photos Organized
1. Gather Your Photos
This step is about gathering your photo collection, or parts of it, in one place so you can assess and begin organizing. There are two schools of thought here. One approach is to start small, organizing a portion fully to enjoy a sense of accomplishment. The other is to gather your entire collection, assess it, and decide where to start, working through each step for the whole collection. I prefer the first approach: starting small. Tackling an entire collection requires significant time and concentration and won't be completed in a single day or weekend. Instead, deciding to organize one box, bag, or stack of albums at a time requires less time and space, and you won’t feel guilty every time you walk past a large, unfinished photo mess.
2. Simple Sort
This step is all about decision-making, and it should be a quick, "beat the clock" exercise. Take a stack of photos and sort them, trusting your instincts. Use the Sorting Rules: Best, Good, Story, and Trash. By sorting quickly and decisively, you can streamline the process and reduce the overwhelming nature of organizing your photo collection.
3. Family Timeline
One of the best tools to support your photo organizing is a family timeline. Creating this as a group can be a fun activity for the whole family to enjoy together. This timeline will be invaluable in the next step, helping you categorize and date your photos. I suggest creating the time line with family milestones on a long piece of butchers paper rolled out on a table. First create a horizontal line and place vertical notches across to depict decades. Then add your dates in the correct space, with the leftmost as the earliest date.
4. Categorize
The final portion of organizing your photos is to sort by category. The timeline is your tool. Sorting chronologically is by far, the most popular way to organize. Start with your “Best” pile and when that is complete, move onto the “Good” pile. Store the categorized photos separated by labeled index cards in an archival safe photo box.
ENJOY Your Memories.
Knowing how to organize your memories is one thing but implementing the process and finding the tools can be daunting.
Don’t worry I am here to help. I have the perfect solution: DIG YOUR PHOTOS!
Hi! I am Rhoda and I have been where you are.
I understand your struggle in sorting your memories and those you have inherited.
Thats why I created DIG YOUR PHOTOS! the only complete print photo organizing kit on the market. My passion is the help people save their story in their own home. DIG YOUR PHOTOS! offers more than just instructions, it provides step by step recipe cards with video demo links, all the tools needed in a handy tool pouch, the family timeline template and the temporary sorting box to hold 1275 sorted photos. DIG YOUR PHOTOS! will allow you to save your story to leave a legacy and provides you with peace of mind that your photos are safe. Are you ready to organize your photos?
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“Great product, easy to use. Got this as a gift to organize my tons and tons of photos and I couldn’t be happier. Laughing and reminiscing while we were (digging) through old photos made it a family fun event . I highly recommend Dig Your Photos to anyone and especially as a gift.”
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