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Last year, I organized all of my photos from 2005 to the present …quite a feat in my book. Now, since I don’t want another 10+ years to go by without keeping up with all my photos, I have a process to organize and keep track of all those photos in about 30-minutes a month.
Downloading and organizing my photos each month has come down to a 30-minute process as long as I stick to certain daily or weekly tasks for keeping up.
This process completes two goals:
01. To organize photos for long-term storage.
02. To save time in creating an annual family yearbook.
You can use my 2-phase process to organize and keep track of photos in 30-minutes a month.
Phase 01: Daily/Weekly Tasks
01. Keep track of memories
When my daughter was a baby, it was a whirlwind to remember all the little things you’re supposed to add to a baby’s 1st-year book. I got most of it but I also missed a lot. The same happened over many of the next couple of years.
One year, I was gifted a planner that wouldn’t work for my normal planning. But it was perfect for writing down and keeping track of things my daughter said and did. I filled in nearly every day.
Now I use the monthly spread of my PowerSheets planner to write 1-2 sentences about the day. Taking these notes helps me as I create my family yearbook to write a story for the year.
If you use a planner, you too can write down a quick 1-sentence summary of the day. I do this either in the evening or the following morning.
If you prefer going digital, add notes and comments to photos in a shared album on Apple or Google Photos.
If you’re just starting out with memory keeping, download a monthly memory journal from the resources page here.
02. Declutter & edit photos
As I organized all my photos, I had to declutter a ton of photos unnecessarily taking up space on my hard drive. Now I try to declutter photos from my iPhone before downloading photos to my computer.
Typically if it’s been a big photo day, I declutter photos in the evening or the next day. This saves a lot of space on my iPhone and time during Phase 02.
This is also the time I edit photos if the lighting was off or if I need to crop a stranger out of the photo. I’ve found the iPhone editing tools better than editing tools on my computer’s photo app and Shutterfly (that I use for creating photo books).
Phase 02: 30-Minute Monthly Tasks
01. Download photos to the computer.
At the end of the month, I download my photos onto my computer, following the steps in Part 1 of this photo organizing series. All photos are downloaded to my permanent storage —this external hard drive.
Since at this point I’m only downloading one month’s worth of photos, this process goes quickly.
02. Organize photos
Once all the photos are downloaded, I sort photos for specific events into separate folders. (This step is detailed in Part 02.) Once all the photos are organized in the external hard drive, I copy the monthly folder to my permanent backup storage on Dropbox.
03. Best Of Folder
Since my goal is to create a photo book for the year, I create another folder for the year titled “Best Of [insert year].” When I’m ready to work on my family yearbook, all of my favorite photos are ready in a single folder to upload to Shutterfly.
Note: I create my Best Of folder on Google Photos since it connects easily with Shutterfly. I’ve talked about Google Photos in the past, but at some point, I’ll have to write a process for organizing those photos.
That is my 2-phase process to organize and keep track of photos in 30-minutes a month. Photos are safely stored for the long-term and half the work is done in creating my family yearbook.
One important thing to note: I have to intentionally set aside time to do this. I set aside a 30-minute block of time each month to complete this task. If it isn’t planned for, it won’t happen.
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