You may know by now that I am a hopelessly addicted list maker. I practically have lists of the lists I want to make, and I’m only half kidding.
Among my pile is a list of “One Day” projects. These projects mostly pertain to household organization, like creating a recipe binder, and equally straightforward-yet-time-consuming tasks such as “Learn basic knife skills,” and “Stock a basic bar.”
I am in no particular hurry to get to these projects, but I figure there is no time like the present to get a start on them.
I have thus decided to begin the project of perfectly organizing all of my photos–both digital and in print, as well as setting up a a system I can realistically use for all future photos. This is no small task, as we are quite liberal with picture-taking around here.
I have about a million of those shots.
I know there is a big fancy world of online scrapbooking that I could pursue, but I want to keep it simple. I plan to take only my favorite digital photos and create photo books using Snapfish, starting with our wedding photos (which were never properly printed or put into an album of any sort. Oops).
Depending on how many photos this ends up being, I’ll do an album for each year since I started taking pictures (circa 2002), but I’ll hopefully be able to combine some of the more non-eventful years.
Bigger events (i.e. wedding and honeymoon) will get their own album.
The ones that don’t make the cut will be stored on my external hard-drive, organized by month and year.
I don’t have a solution for the printed photos yet. Back in high school I dabbled into scrapbooking, but that is just so much work, especially since I have no interest in printing photos other than for framing.
How do you organize your photos?
ETA: Snapfish is having a special for 50% off as many photo books as you like! It lasts until October 19. Coupon code: OCTBOOKS
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This is such a great idea. I really need to organize all my photos and making books is so cool.
I love organizing and list making too. 🙂
I have made a digital photobook for every major family vacation over the past 3 years and my family loves it. I’m a big fan of photobooks, and you can often get them on sale or discounted with online codes and promotions. As for the other photos on my computer, I have them in folders organized by year and date taken/uploaded. Oh, and you can try to digitize your printed pictures so you can store them forever. It can be time consuming if you do it yourself (or you can pay to do it), but it is worth it.
That’s a great idea to digitalize my print pictures. I don’t think I have the negatives anymore to get them put onto a CD, but maybe I can use a high quality scanner…
Thanks!
Ohhh Lara, I’m going to make loooouuuuurrrrvee to youuuuuu! Thank you for simplifying this item on my to-do list. Our wedding photos have in fact been printed, hahahaha. No way i’m ever sticking them in an album. And I never could decide on which digital photo album company to go with, but Snapfish also has a Dutch department! Woohooo.
One question: do you ‘do’ anything with your photos before uploading them? I sometimes think my photos look much better on the computer than they do when printed (they turn out grainy or crappy colours), and sometimes I wonder if it is something I’m doing wrong, or whether it’s just the printing place. Do they need adjustments, or something?
Snapfish is great! I used their UK site back in the day, too.
I haven’t “done” anything to my photos before making albums. I’m sure I could if I was a whiz with photo editing, but the ones I have worked with so far have all been pretty high quality photos.
I would check the resolution suggestions from Snapfish and then make sure your photos at least meet that standard.
It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one obsessed with lists. Every month or so I fill a notebook with lists (and other various notes). I have daily to do lists, BIG to do lists, lists of things I want, lists of things I need, lists of upcoming events… you get the idea. Somehow I missed the future projects list, so thank you for bringing that to my attention! I will now be starting one of those, too. Us DGs, so alike 😉
Lara- This project is on my to-do list too. Notably wedding photos and their own book. Hasn’t happened yet but I am loving the idea of a photo book for each year. Have fun!
it was a year after the fact, but we FINALLY made our wedding album. my high school days are overly documented…but my OCD self had the pics in albums right after. nowadays i just have a bazillion cds of digital photos. maybe once you tackle your own you can get to mine?
Unfortunately, my photos are a serious mess… I do “force” myself to make photo books at the end of each year (it’s our X-mas gift to each other), and I also make photo books of special events. But there are still so many photos that don’t have a home or simply should be deleted… I’ll work on it some day. That day should be soon…
i am such a mess with my photos. i have 5 albums that have been waiting 10 years to be filled.
We have so many pictures it’s unbelievable. Just wait until you and your hubby have kids!! I have all of my printed photos organized by date in photo books, and have 10 years of scrapbooks. Now with digital, I’ve been doing some photobooks and am thrilled about the special at Snapfish. Thanks for the info!
You sound so organized! Yes, part of the reason I am doing this now is so we have some sort of system in place for when we do eventually have kids. Hopefully it will help.
I tossed my scrapbooking the minute we went digital. And we sent all 10,000 photos (or was it 7,000?) to scanmyphotos.com and they sent back a disc with everything on it. So we threw away the hard copies. Into the black bin. For realz. It felt great.
Now everything is organized on our main computer (we have our own laptops too and for me, it gets complicated when my blog photos overlap my ‘real life’ photos like when blog friends become real friends). But kudos to you for doing albums of any kind. Plus some wise person once told me that if you don’t have all of your info in 3 different places, it doesn’t exist. Ie, have a couple of Lacy drives and keep them at different locations- and update all of them (what if you have a fire at your apt and all 3 sources are there: you lose everything).
But this is a reminder that I need to update everything- Derek is far better at this than I am.
Good advice! I think we have everything in two places, but after reading this I’m not even sure those are both up to date. Adding to to the “to do” list!
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