5 Easy Steps to Organize Your Photos

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I am all about orga­ni­za­tion, espe­cial­ly at this time of year, and today I am shar­ing my 5 steps to orga­nize your pho­tos! Every spring, I tack­le some orga­ni­za­tion­al projects, and last year, one of my big spring clean­ing projects was orga­niz­ing my photos.

You’ve got the cam­era and equip­ment, you’ve used the hacks to get amaz­ing pho­tos …now, what do you do with the thou­sands of pho­tos you have? If you are like me, you need a sys­tem to orga­nize those images. My biggest fear is los­ing these trea­sured mem­o­ries. Mine were all on dif­fer­ent devices, CD’s-some of you may be too young to remem­ber putting pho­tos on those… I even had pic­tures on a lap­top that I can no longer access.

So, what did I do? I put togeth­er a “sys­tem” to help orga­nize all of my mem­o­ries, and today, I am shar­ing the 5 steps sys­tem with you.

Now, this is a big project, and it can be over­whelm­ing! I want you to take it year by year and month by month. I would also sug­gest that you work back­ward, start­ing with the cur­rent year.

Steps to Organizing Your Photos

Step #1…Gather
So, just like any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion project, you want to make sure that you have every­thing in one place, so step one is to bring all of your pho­tos and devices togeth­er in one place. Depend­ing on the num­ber of pho­tos you have, this “place” can be on your com­put­er. How­ev­er, putting all of your pho­tos on your com­put­er can take up a lot of space, so you may want to do this on an exter­nal hard dri­ve. Once you have decid­ed the loca­tion, move all pho­tos from the indi­vid­ual devices to the “hub.” Keep in mind that this can take a long time, so work one device at a time and don’t get discouraged!

Step 2…Create Your Sys­tem
Step 2 is my favorite step! This is where you cre­ate the sys­tem to orga­nize all of your pho­tos and car­ry this sys­tem for­ward for all future images. You can orga­nize many ways, but my favorite and what I find the eas­i­est is cre­at­ing chrono­log­i­cal fold­ers, but remem­ber the key is find­ing what works for you so that you stick with it.

I have a mas­ter fold­er on my desk­top called “Per­son­al Pho­tos” and anoth­er for “Images by Dena.” In each fold­er, I have years. In each year, months. When label­ing the months, I always put a num­ber in front of the month. For exam­ple; 1‑January, this will make sort­ing by name eas­i­er. I also have a fold­er called “Misc Pho­tos.” I put the pho­tos that I am unsure about here until I can spend a bit more time fig­ur­ing out where they belong.

Step #3…Culling Your Pho­tos
This is by hard the most chal­leng­ing step for me. Once you have your pho­tos all in one place and your pho­to­sys­tem set up on your com­put­er, it’s time to cull the images.

Now, I’m a mom and a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, so you can imag­ine the num­ber of pic­tures that I have of my kids. This isn’t easy but try to be ruth­less. If that pho­to does­n’t evoke a mem­o­ry, feel­ing, or happiness…delete it. If you look at it and won­der why you took it…delete it. It’s okay to delete pho­tos, I give you per­mis­sion, and you need to give your­self that per­mis­sion as well.

Once you’ve delet­ed all of the pho­tos you no longer wish to keep, you are going to orga­nize your month even more. Inside each month, I have addi­tion­al fold­ers labeled by the day, the month, and the event. Remem­ber that you can always check the meta­da­ta for info on what date your pho­tos were taken.

Step #4…Backup
This is the most impor­tant step in the entire process…backing up your pho­tos! I am neu­rot­ic with this step as los­ing my pho­tos is a mas­sive fear of mine. My images are incred­i­bly impor­tant to me, as I am sure most peo­ples are, so you want to make sure they are backed up. I have my pho­tos orga­nized on my com­put­er, exter­nal hard dri­ve, and a cloud service.

You can pur­chase a hard dri­ve based off on your needs, but as I said, I would use both a hard dri­ve and a cloud service.

Step #5…Maintenance
Step #5 is where your com­mit­ment comes in. Just like any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion­al project, you are going to need to main­tain it. On this one, do as I say, not as I do. I would sug­gest that you orga­nize any new pho­tos month­ly, but I tend to do them every six months, which is not a great habit.

Woot Woot…You’re Orga­nized!!
Okay, now this is not an easy project, and it can take a long time, but I promise that you will feel so relieved and main­te­nance is effort­less once you com­plete it.

Check out this video for step by step instruc­tions! Hap­py organizing!