Pictures, Pictures, Everywhere!
I’ve had a few people ask me how to organize loose photos. There are several options and they all depend on how much time and money you have for the project as to which one you will want to use. It also depends on whether your photos are scanned (on your computer or a disc), or whether they are printed (with no scanned copy). For my mom’s photos, all of them were before the age of digital cameras, so they were all loose. It takes a lot of time to scan photos onto your computer, so if you have a large amount of pictures to organize, I would not suggest trying to scan them all. However, if you do have your photos on your computer or can get them there, my suggestion would be to put them in photo books. There are so many options available from cheap to pricey, pocket size to wedding album size, many color choices, themes, etc. Here are two of my favorite places to create photo books online:
http://myphotopipe.com/photobooks.php
When creating a photo book, you can insert text on each page or captions under each photo, which is a very convenient alternative to scrapbook journaling which takes a lot of time and a steady hand. One of my favorite things I’ve ever done with my boys’ pictures was when I wrote a story about them used their pictures (in a photo book) to illustrate the story. I gave the books as Christmas gifts that year to most of our family members and it was a huge hit. Since then, I’ve had every intention of writing a new story every year and making that one of my traditions at Christmas…that has yet to happen again! Another good idea with regards to photo books, is to create them for specific events. I now make a photobook for each of my boys every year on their birthday. Kind of like a year book for that year in their life. Oh yes, I used to be the “Great Scrapbooking Mom” with tons of embellishments, beautiful paper, stickers, cool tools, and great scrapbooks…but times have changed, my days seem to have shortened over the last five years, and I’ve resorted to simpler, more cost effective ways.
If your photos are already printed and are loose, there are still a few good options available that don’t involve scanning all of your pictures onto a computer. The easiest way would certainly be to put all of them (or as much as possible) into one large photo album of some sort. This is a link to the Lillian Vernon website where they have a really great ‘fold out photo case’ that holds 400 photos! You could easily type up a title card to slide into the top of each row in order to label where the photos are from or who is in them.
There are endless designs and styles of photo albums out there in almost every store you can think of. Just remember to only use “acid free” photo albums so you can preserve your photos as safely as possible.
The final, most time consuming, and potentially most expensive method, would be scrapbooking. After I had my first son, we were living in Atlanta. We had a really great scrapbook store near our house called Scrap Happy. I could spend hours in that little store. I always gave myself a $20 budget per visit. I’d bring all of my photos with me so I could find coordinating paper, stickers, embellishments, etc. Then I’d go home, put Joshua to bed, and scrapbook for hours on end. It is very rewarding to look back at those scrapbooks now. But the reality is, even stay-at-home-moms don’t typically have time to do this regularly. And the sadest part is, the further and further you fall behind, the more guilt you feel as each child’s memories begin to pile up in some drawer or closet (thus developing more clutter!). If you have the time and resources it takes to be a scrapbooker, more power to you! Otherwise, I’d encourage you to use one of the other methods I listed.
Last, but certainly not least, please allow yourself to throw away pictures. If you have a sleeve of pictures that you got developed and there are some “nonsense” pictures in there (you know the ones…blurry, no one is looking at the camera, a shot of someone’s back side) just throw those away! You will feel so much better about having your favorite shots preserved in an organized way, then to hang onto every single picture you’ve ever taken, but have them tucked away, unlovingly, in some drawer or closet.
Maybe this will be one of your New Year’s resolutions…”Organize My Photos”. It’s a fun project and you and your kids will be so glad you did it when they are grown, married, and have kids of their own and want to compare their old baby pictures with your new grandchild. :) That’s a staggering thought for me. :)
Happy Organizing!
~audrey
P.S. If you have a particular topic you’d like me to address, please contact me via email or comment on one of my posts, and I’d be happy to give it a shot!