Organise Your Photos in 3 Simple Steps {Let's Get Organised}

Organising is not my thing. So I am not even going to pretend. But photos are very important to me. They are my memories. As my actual memory is pretty shoddy. And since having the boys, I have a pretty good collection of photos.

My Photos were everywhere and unorganised. Today they are mostly in one place and sort of organised. I hate organising and I am best at procrastinating. And these two do not make a good combination.

The hardest thing to do is start. So here are my 3 easy steps get you lazy lot going. :D

1. Dump Your Photos
...into one place of course! Gather all your captured moments, from your iPad, iPhone, memory cards (Don't leave your photos on the card! They can corrupt and if you are unlucky you may not be able to recover them).

Then synch them in 2 more places... external hard drive, Dropbox, another external hard drive. I have lost files before when my laptop died on me and I didn't back up.

2. Organise
Sort your photos into folders under years and months, then sort into folders how you want. e.g. events, favourites, days.

3. Delete
Go through each month and delete the unwanted. The blurry, the ones you have many of but at every different angle. Pick the best. I make it a rule of 3-4 photos of the same shot (I still haven't quite let go yet). Think about what you will do with them. Are they print worthy?

And there you have it, 3 basic steps to get you started on your organising journey.

From here you can organise further how you like.

For me, after I have edited my photos, I save them in a folder labelled HIGH RES, under their month folder. Then from these folders I choose images for my blog and watermark and make them web friendly and put them into more folders under 2LITTLEFACES: No Technology Sunday, Little Moments and so on.

Alongside my now organised photos, I have more folders for photo books I plan to do, like my wedding book (I can hear Steve laughing at me now) and for the boys first years.

Allocate time to organising the photos. Finding time is hard I know but, do what you can. I have found it easier to set time limits on doing each job. You may have 20mins before pick up. Then do some sorting or deleting. 1 hour after they have gone to bed? 20 min of sorting, 30 min of deleting or1 hour for editing, I could easily spend HOURS editing. Now I just stop when my laptop battery runs out. :D

You have to do what works for you. But if you have difficulty starting. Like I did. Just putting all your photos in one place is a great start. Baby steps. :)

Have you any more tips on how to organise your digital photos? Would love to hear them!