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Last updated on May 5th, 2023 at 02:54 am
Do you have a crazy amount of photos lobbed into haphazard folders all over your hard drive? I do …or at least, I did until this past week when I began Part 2 of my photo organizing project. Currently, I’m decluttering and organizing my digital photos.
Last week, I worked on moving all my photos and videos to an single external hard drive. (Click here to read Part 1 of How To Organize Your Photos.) Now that all my files are in a single place, I can delete unneeded photos and videos and organize them by specific events and file types.
In this post, I’ll give you the step-by-step process for decluttering and organizing digital photos.
Step 01. Choose where to start
The hardest part about organizing is deciding where to start. In this case, I think working backward from your most current photos is a good place to start.
As an example for this post, I’ll use January 2020.
In January 2020, we took a ton of pictures during a day trip to San Diego. When I transferred my files to my external hard drive (from part 1), there were only 3 pictures total from that day.
For now, I have my photos backed up through Google Photos. Fortunately, I was able to download the missing photos and videos from that day and many other days!
This instance goes to show how important it is to stay on top of downloading your photos frequently. One of the reasons I hadn’t been doing it was because of how frustrating it was to transfer my photos from my iPhone to my PC. Now I have the process documented so I can do it quickly, easily, and frequently.
I’ll reveal my plan for keeping up with photos in an upcoming post.
Step 02a. Choose a filing system
In the previous post, I showed how to macro-organize your files by year (“2020,” “2019,” “2018,” etc), then by months (“2020-01,” “2020-02,” etc). Next, we’ll micro-organize the monthly folders.
After seeing Nancy Ray’s system for filing photos, I decided to use some of that for my own system. (As a side note, this is how organization works …you take another idea and adapt it to fit your own needs.) I liked her idea to sort files by event and to separate the video files. For now, I decided to leave the remaining photos within the main monthly folder.
Here’s how it looks:
Step 02b. Organizing subfolders
If there are a lot of photos from an event, I create a folder for it. For example, a birthday or a trip. In this step, you can move all those photos and videos into those sub-folders. Then follow the remaining steps for decluttering and organizing each of those subfolders.
Step 03. Declutter files
As I went through my photos, I found a lot of screenshots and pictures of tools and hardware from the hardware store (from my husband’s home improvement projects). I’m pretty sure I won’t be needing any of those photos.
Going month-by-month using the “large icon” view, I removed all photos of things that we don’t need as part of our family memories. I also deleted any pictures that were over-exposed or completely blurry.
With iPhone, .AAE files are automatically generated by Apple. .AAE files contain changes made to photo files. They’re completely useless if you’re using PC. From my research, I determined that I can delete these files, but I recommend you research before you make the decision to delete them.
To group delete all the .AAE files, change the view to “Details,” then sorted by “Type.”
Step 04. Sort and file
Since the files are sorted by type, create a new folder for videos (that I’ve named in this example “2020-01 Videos”). Select the entire group of .MOV files and move them into the video folder.
Next, change the view back to “Large Icons” and contine to declutter and organize the remaining photos as needed.
Within the events subfolders, move the .MOV files into their own subfolder (ex. “2020-01 Birthday Videos”).
Step 05. Choosing favorites (optional)
In Part 3 of this photo organizing project, I’ll print photos and create photo books that I’ve missed from years past. This means I’ll have to choose which photos will be part of that process.
At this point, you can create additional subfolders in your main folder and events folders of your favorite photos to add to a photo book and/or to be printed.
Personally, I’d rather declutter and organize all my photos first while I’m in that frame of mind. I intend to go back through my photos to pick and choose my favorites.
However, you might find it easier to choose your favorite photos as you work on each month or year. Step 05 is optional to do now or wait until Part 3 (like me).
Once you’ve completed all these steps, repeat for each month of each year.
Decluttering and Organizing Digital Photos – The Details
Do you need a photos-only folder?
I decided not to move my photos into a subfolder. To me, it felt like that was overdoing it, but you can certainly do it that way.
What to do with screenshots and reference photos
If you take a lot of screenshots or photos of books or papers for reference, I recommend NOT using your photos app. Instead, use an app like Evernote, Dropbox, or Google Keep.
Using one of these services allows you to file systematically and allows searchability. Rather than scrolling through your photos searching through a million screenshots, make it easier by using a search bar.
As a bonus, you can take notes on your image using Evernote or Google Keep. (Here’s a tutorial that also walks you through the basics of how Evernote works.)
It doesn’t seem like there’s much to Part 2. However, if you have over 10 years of photos to declutter and organize, it is a lot!
If you’re working through this series of posts week-by-week, I recommend completing one or two years of photos, then moving on to Part 3.
Read Part 1 of How To Organize Your Photos >>>
You can view .AAE files on PC. Just download iTunes to your computer, choose to view the file using iTunes.
Thanks, Becky! iTunes never works on my PC, so I had no idea.