{"id":1593,"date":"2013-09-04T19:03:34","date_gmt":"2013-09-05T00:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/?p=1593"},"modified":"2013-09-04T12:29:13","modified_gmt":"2013-09-04T17:29:13","slug":"organizing-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/2013\/09\/organizing-photos\/","title":{"rendered":"Organizing Photos"},"content":{"rendered":"

This can be a daunting prospect, especially if you have little to no system in place.\u00a0 It\u2019s similar to dealing with paper \u2013 these relatively small things that each need to be looked at and dealt with.\u00a0 Yet photographs are often one of our most prized possessions, and creating a system means that not only are we protecting them, but also that we can appreciate them when we want.\u00a0 As I touched on last month in Technology – Digital Pictures<\/a>, organizing photos is becoming even more of a challenge to organize since we often have both physical pictures as well as digital ones.<\/p>\n

As with virtually everything that we need to organize, the first step is to figure out what you want to do with your photos \u2013 besides keep them of course.\u00a0 Do you want to put them into an album?\u00a0 Do you want to scrapbook them?\u00a0 Do you want them all printed or scanned \u2013 keeping them all in one specific medium?\u00a0 How would you like to be able to appreciate them?\u00a0 There is no wrong answer \u2013 although many people are embarrassed they don\u2019t want to do more with them than have some order.<\/p>\n

Let me make a couple of things clear early on \u2013 one, you do not have to set aside a weekend or a day to begin organizing your pictures, you can decide to spend an hour here and there (as with all organizing endeavors).\u00a0 Two, as precious as photographs are, challenge yourself to part with the blurry and unnecessary duplicates.\u00a0 Three, if you want to keep the physical images safe, look for archival containers (including albums and pages) that might not be available locally.\u00a0 Four, consider whether you need to organize the larger pictures independently from the standard size pictures.<\/p>\n

Often the traditional thinking with pictures is to get them into chronological order.\u00a0 If the mere thought of figuring out the chronology of all your pictures leaves you wanting to scream, don\u2019t worry \u2013 there are other options.\u00a0 The ideas for organizing photographs can work with both physical and digital \u2013 though digital has other challenges associated with it.<\/p>\n

One approach for organizing photos is to consider a broad timeline idea \u2013 more than chronological.\u00a0 One person I worked with chose this idea: since kids, couple-hood, before spouse, and earlier generations.\u00a0 In this situation, we needed 4 empty boxes\/containers for those categories and we sorted the boxes of pictures into them, just adding another box into the category when the first was filled.\u00a0 In another situation, after using floss to remove old pictures from albums, we spread out the pictures to divide them into decades \u2013 the \u201810s, \u201820s, \u201830s, and on.<\/p>\n

If you think about scrapbooking \u2013 not that you are going to do this \u2013 the idea is to have a theme, the focus of the particular scrapbook and gather those photos together.\u00a0 You can use this idea for organizing, the themes for your family and life \u2013 trips; family traditions (i.e. holidays, celebrations, etc.); athletic\/theatrical\/nature-loving\/etc. kids; family \u201cmonsters\u201d (pets); state of the home (garden pictures, renovations, etc.).\u00a0 This is a time for you to think about your family and the things you are capturing in the pictures.\u00a0 These themes become your broad categories \u2013 the piles or boxes that you sort into.<\/p>\n

Imagine having a collection of pictures from each year your child was in soccer (or whatever activity) all together.\u00a0 Organizing your pictures in this way allows you to see the progression over the years \u2013 there is a continuity to the photos that also offers perspective, \u201clook how much they grew from that first year until their last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if you stop at this point in the organizing process you will have a system in place.\u00a0 Of course, you can continue to refine that system more \u2013 breaking those broad categories down so that specific photos can be found.\u00a0 This is when you can use other groupings within the larger category \u2013 so all the Halloween pictures of your kids or Halloween pictures of your kids from the 1980\u2019s are together.\u00a0 You get to create the way you break it down or not.<\/p>\n

From a preservation standpoint it\u2019s recommended that you refrain from labeling the photographs themselves as inks can end up damaging the images.\u00a0 From an organizing perspective, labeling each picture can be time-consuming and maybe even frustrating.\u00a0 It\u2019s easier to label the envelopes, index cards, and box for each category.<\/p>\n

There it is \u2013 the process to getting your photographs into a system.\u00a0 Yes, it will take time to get through your photos and into the organizing system that makes sense for you.\u00a0 Yet with these dear memories, how wonderful would it be to have easy access to walk down memory lane or to find pictures to share with others?\u00a0 And with the system in place if you decide later on to do something different \u2013 like make an album \u2013 the photos are already organized.\u00a0 Any new pictures coming in can also be easily added to their place in the system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Getting photographs organized can be just as time consuming as getting papers under control \u2013 yet with these wonderful memories it might be more important and rewarding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,27],"tags":[10,18,5,20],"class_list":["post-1593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organizing","category-technology","tag-behavior","tag-goals","tag-household","tag-paperwork"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-pH","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1593"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1596,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions\/1596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}