What to do with all your digital photos, from the Professional Declutterer

As a professional declutterer, here are some tips for organizing and organizing your digital photos.

Find them all

Your pictures may live in various spaces online, your phone being just one. Think of all the places you might have images: file folders on your computer, online file sharing or editing sites, social networks, your downloads folder, memory drives, hard drives, CDs and even old devices.

Digital photos have been around for a while, and chances are you’ve collected them through a wide variety of mediums, some of which are already almost obsolete. This is a good time to move your memories from old media to newer storage options.

Think about security

Maybe you like to keep your photo history on a site like Flickr, Google Photos, or Dropbox. There is no wrong answer; exactly what works for you. With just one caveat: make sure you have a backup type.

Websites come and go, and their rules and benefits change over time. Make sure you don’t put all your eggs in one virtual basket. Maybe maintain two photo archives online or download the batch to a hard drive. You should already be backing up your desktop regularly; make sure to back up your photo library as well.

Clean, clean, clean

I know your dog is the cutest, smartest, funniest, sweetest badass ever. The same goes for your child, your partner, and your pet iguana. But think like a museum curator: don’t hang every painting in the main gallery; you choose the best one. If you have 42 pictures of Junior in that adorable yellow T-shirt, he can pick the first three and delete the others.

I know, I know, it feels like blasphemy, but quantity over quality leads to burnout.

As you look through photos, get rid of unflattering, out-of-focus ones, center people you don’t remember (or don’t really like) or places you can’t identify. With so many to choose from, you can afford to be picky.

Naming conventions FTW

If you’re going through a camera roll, it may seem easy to see what’s what, but being organized will help you in the long run, especially if you have photos tucked away in digital file folders.

It doesn’t matter how you choose to organize them, but come up with a convention and stick to it.

What’s the first thing you think of when looking for a particular photo? Is it the year, subject, location, or other detail? Most digital storage systems allow you to enter metadata, such as year or location, which can help filter results when you search. If you have a lot of images in file folders, you may need more explicit names.

You might find that something like this will work – Christmas 1978, Family Vacation 2018, or Sam Elementary School. Within these categories, you can number each photo. Some images will cross categories, but do your best. Having trouble deciding? Look at other filing systems and see what has worked in the past.

Reliving the memories

Don’t lose sight of the purpose of taking the photos in the first place: look at them later.

Printed photo books can be the easiest way to share and revisit special events. Digital albums are different. Electronic photo frames that display a changing selection of photos are a good option. Don’t leave them all in a digital pile at the bottom of a virtual cardboard box. Enjoy them!

If organizing and curating your thousands of digital photos sounds like a herculean task, take a breath. This is something you can do in 10 to 20 minute increments. Wipe a little while in a waiting room. Move photos into folders while listening to the latest true crime podcast. Like any organizing or decluttering project, incremental steps lead to great results.