A few weeks ago I shared over on my Facebook page that one of my biggest resolutions for the year was to try and get on top of the mounting pile of digital photographs that I have accumulated since having kids. So many of you came up with brilliant ideas and so many of you sounded like you were in the same boat as me (drowning in photos), so I thought that I would share where I am at with it all.
Step One: Sort
The first thing that I did was to take all of the photos for the past few years off every phone and camera and save into folders onto my laptop.
I now have all photos saved by year and then under each year there is a folder for each month. Sounds simple enough, but boy it was a pretty mammoth task! However moving forward every single month I will simply just save the photos for the month into the folders set up.
I have also purchased an external hard drive to back up the folders should anything happen to my laptop or phone.
Step Two: Printing
The next thing I had to do was to try and work out what the heck to do with all of these photos?! I am the type of person who loves having photos around the house, but have avoided making albums and the like.
The kids each have a baby album that shares the first year of their life (these have been done through Mixbook). I decided to do a similar thing with the family memories for the year. So every year I will pick the top highlights for the year and produce a photo book.
As for the rest of the photos...I have purchased some basic photo albums from Kmart for these.
The lovely Kristy from the Sprinkle Studio created labels for the spines (by year) and each album contains all of the photos for the year. These albums the kids can flick through, help me add to etc during the year. Yes I definitely feel like I have gone all retro with these albums, but the kids adore photos just as much as me!
Step Three: Routine
This is absolutely the critical part, because I really need to stick to a routine throughout the year so I stay on top of everything.
The plan is to:
- Save photos off the phone/camera once a month into the folders
- Once photos are saved, pop on a USB to print at Kmart (we all know that I am there nearly every day anyway!).
- Pop photos into the small album once they are printed
If I stick to this, by the time the year is up I will have an album full of photos, photos organised and sorted on my computer (and backed up) and a family photo book done.
Like I said, I know that this is pretty basic. I absolutely LOVE the idea of Project Life and scrap books etc, but I just don't think that I would ever stay on top of it. So for now, this is going to be a manageable way for me to capture and stay on top of the family memories.
If you would like to get into the habit of doing something similar, I will issue a little reminder once a month on my Facebook and Instagram pages that it is time to save photos (and print) how does that sound?!
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