Organizing Digital Photos

Inspired by the I Heart Organizing project photography challenge, I decided it was time to organize our family photos.

I just did a quick check and I have only 4.69 GB of free space remaining. The photos are taking up a tremendous amount of digital
space on my external hard drive. I do regularly back up my photos and files but the process takes an entire day and sometimes they don't all get captured as I run out of time to finish. I would be devastated if I were to lose these irreplaceable family memories.

My overall goal is create hard copy photo books so we can enjoy the photos and as a back up if the digital ones ever get lost.

I also want to capture the children's art work as I have an entire Rubbermaid bin filled with keepsakes that I don't know what to do with. I am considering Artkive or some other digital way to reduce clutter but still enjoy the children's artwork.

I decided to start with the year 2008. My son was born January of 2008 and my daughter turned two that year. I figured it was as good a year as any to start with. I also have a plan of one year per month to organize the photos.

Here are the steps I will follow while I go through one year at a time:

1. organize digital photos by month and event
2. photograph souvenirs and wall photos, organize into appropriate digital folder
3. write blurbs for each main event/cluster of photos
4. edit digital photos on picmonkey.com
5. choose digital program and insert album
6. print family digital photo album

If you want to check out my progress, check out my Crafts page. I plan to update it as soon as each step is complete. It will keep me motivated (I hope) to continue on.

How do you organize your photos?