4 Questions to Help You Organize Your Favorite Photos

Previously I focused on whittling down that mess of photos you’ve been avoiding for who knows how long. If you followed those steps, then by now you’ve tossed all the crummy photos and duplicates, kept the ones you love and are ready to get organized. But with so many storage and display options available, it can be hard to figure out the right system. Ask yourself these questions, and you’ll be on your way to a picture-perfect solution.

1. How do I plan to use my photos? This is the key question. How often will you look at them? Will you pull them out on a leisurely Sunday morning while wrapped in a cozy robe with coffee cup in hand, or during frequent family gatherings to reminisce? Be honest: Do you ever look at your photos?

Whatever the case, it’s important to organize the photos you have into something manageable. It’s never helpful to have a space-gobbling pile of photographic chaos. And if you’re keeping photos for the next generation, understand that it’s never kind to pass on a mess.


2. How many photos do I have? Figure out how many photos you have and how much space you want to dedicate to their storage. Gather all of your photos and put them on a table or other large work surface. Also decide where you want to store your collection. It’s ideal to have photos in one place that uses one cohesive and user-friendly system, so you can easily add photos as time goes on.


Now that you have a clear idea of how much space your photos occupy, will they fit in the space you’ve allotted? Although the overflow may very well go back into storage (in a much tidier fashion, of course), you may want to take a second pass at paring down. What size are your photos? Are they mostly standard snaps, or do you have a lot of large and odd-size photos you’ll have to account for when storing them?


3. What categories make the most sense to me? Start sorting your photos loosely by category: chronology, event, towns you lived in or a combination of those. What categories will work best for you is personal, so think about how you structure memories in your own mind and sort accordingly.

Tighten up your categories once you see what you’ve got. If you have a complicated or extended family tree to consider, it may be prudent to separate your mother’s old family photos from those of your father and so on. Once you get going, a natural or logical structure may develop in your categories, so pay attention to your feelings, go with the flow and keep it simple.


4. Do I want albums, boxes or digital versions?

Albums. They have the familiar feel of a book in your hands, show several images on each spread, accommodate odd sizes and are easy to pull off a shelf and enjoy any time. The drawbacks are that they hold very few pictures per square inch of space they occupy, they may damage photos, and they often look like a hodgepodge when stored in view.

Boxes. They hold a lot of photos; they stack very well; they have dividers for organizing; it’s fun to flip through a stack of photos held in your hands; and they can be painted or covered to match your decor. Drawbacks are that they don’t accommodate larger sizes (unless you purchase custom photo boxes), and you have to be sure they’re acid free.


Digital. There are so many options for digitizing, from thumb drives to cloud-based storage, that it’s now easy to immortalize priceless, fragile and odd-size images. Digitizing can completely eliminate storage issues and allows you to share images with multiple people. Drawbacks are that digital image storage can be as cluttered and unusable as physical images when not managed well; scanning is time consuming; scanning services are expensive; and losing a tiny thumb drive can mean losing all of your images in one fell swoop. Plus, digital images don’t provide the same visceral and kinesthetic satisfaction as holding a precious photo in your hand.


While I certainly prefer a single solution, you may decide that a civilized combination works best for you. But whether you organize your photos for personal enjoyment now or to pass down to others, the right system will honor your history and make viewing images a pleasure for years to come.

Tell us: How do you store your photos?

URL: 4 Questions to Help You Organize Your Favorite Photos http://www.decor-ideas.org/cases-view-id-22195.html