be a photo superstar: organize your photos now, for the year

For so many of us, photo organizing is an absolute nightmare.

Hundreds and hundreds of family photos are sitting, stuck, on cameras, phones, zip drives, and old hard drives.

They rarely–if ever–get download from camera to computer or phone to computer.

Many of us have dozens of photos loose in boxes. Here there, and everywhere. Photo mess.

And we’re not alone. I think it’s more the norm than not to have photos mixed up. When we’re dealing with all that’s on our plate as busy parents, photo organizing often falls by the wayside.

This year is going to be different.

We are all going to be photo superstars, organizing photos now for the year. And beyond.

See? We’re serious about living focused in 2015, yo. Serious.

Here’s the skinny. . .

Be a Photo Superstar–Organize Your Photos Now for the Year:

1. First things first: Start fresh now.

Now. As in today. As in this month. Wherever you are right now.

Don’t go nutty trying to catch everything up from previous months or years. You’ll go nuts. If it happens that here and there you begin to clean up the past in the next few days or weeks, great. If not, then just celebrate the fact that now you are taking charge of your photos from here on out.

2. Create folders. Folders are key.

And? Stay simple.

Go into your computer and find your photo program. I have a Mac, so I use iPhoto. If you have a Windows computer, you may have Photo Gallery installed. If you can’t find it or figure it out, just start fresh and create a folder called photos.

Your photos need not be organized into specific events or children or anything crazy like that. Stay simple.

3. Do a little moving.

For real. Just a little.

You know you’re going to create a Family Snapshot photo album for the holidays? Start dragging photos into a ‘Family Snapshot 2015’ album.

From here on out, drag the few photos that might work for that project into that album. Bam.

You always make super-cute mugs with your kids’ faces on them for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day? Start a ‘Family Gift’ folder. Today.

Shimmy some photos into that folder. Bam.

You have wanted to start that baby book for your child for the last few years but never have? (Yeah, me neither.) Create a folder for each kid, so that when they come running to you for pictures of themselves that they need THAT VERY DAY, you can just head over to your ‘Maddy album’ or ‘Owen album’ or ‘Cora album’ and let the kid choose.

Delete photos that don’t matter.

Honestly, I totally screwed up my old computer by letting — get this– 35,000+ photos accumulate on the hard drive. That is way, way too many. The folks at Apple suggested I keep photos more in the 5-3,000 range, if that.

When you know better, you do better. So now I’m at 5,0001. Gulp.

4. Start backing up.

You really don’t want to lose your photos, friends. You really don’t.

Try these options:

Have your photos automatically upload and backup to Google;
- for Android: photos app -> settings ->auto backup
- for computer: download the Autobackup app;
- for iOS (iPhone, iPad, etc.): google app -> menu -> gear -> camera/photos -> auto backup on (remember to allow Google to access your photos by going to settings -> privacy -> photos -> allow Google
Use Backblaze to back up your whole computer, photos and all
- I love Backblaze because it’s affordable and automatic and all of my stuff is safe, somewhere in the clouds.
Grab a hard drive or a few zip drives to keep your desktop clean.
- I’m pretty crazy and use both a hard drive to automatically backup my stuff each night and zip drives to hold my blog photos.

Use Instaport to save all of your Instagram photos
- Really. Free and easy. Save them all or just tag some of them a certain way (maybe use #family or #keep) and the photos with that hashtag will automatically be saved to your harddrive. Cool, right?
- Just remember to then move those photos right to your Family Snapshot (or whatever) folder every few weeks.

That’s it. Not only should this help you get back on track with photos, but when it comes time to make your photo books or photo gifts, you’ll have photos ready. The gifts won’t take you a million years to create.

You’ll grab a coupon. Upload the folder to the photo site (we like Photobooks, stationery, cards, and more from Shutterfly.), and bam. Ready to roll!

Check out a little more about photo books (when I say we love them over here, I mean it!):

What works for you? How do you stay on top of your family’s photos? I’d love to hear it!

#livefocused posts:

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