momAgenda Blog

My System for Organizing Photos

August 12, 2009 10:45 AM

Photographs are incredibly important to me. I love to look back at our old photos, especially the ones from when the kids were babies, and allow memories to come flooding back.
One of the challenges for me has been finding a system for keeping these treasures organized. My system has evolved over my 13 years of parenting, and it is one that is working well for me.
When my kids were born, each one got their own photo album. So now, we have a "First Year" album for all 4 kids, which is really nice. Ultrasound photos are also in those albums (my kids LOVE looking at their ultrasound photos), and by the time my 4th was born I was organized enough to include a lock of his new baby hair!
Since they are now all long past their first year, I have had to put a new system in place. What I do now is, I order doubles of all my photos from iphoto. When they arrive, they go into "triage" in my office until I have time to organize them. Organizing the photos involves sorting them into separate piles based on occasion. For example, I'll make one pile for the first day of school photos, another pile for Halloween photos, etc. Each pile goes into an envelope which I label with the occasion. Those envelopes go into a basket in chronological order.
I start a new photo album for each year. Right now I happen to have a photo basket filled with envelopes of photos from all of 2008 and the first half of 2009 (lest you think I am on top of this at all!!!). Eventually, hopefully soon, I will sit down with the 2008 photos and put them in an album marked "2008." I probably won't put the 2009 photos into albums until well into 2010!
This is the system that works for me. What about you? Do you have any improvements upon my system?

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