Hello Friends,

Family photos have been a struggle for me since year one of our marriage. A good system has alluded me for years and indecision has kept me from doing anything about it! I’ve tried a few things, only to realize it wasn’t a good fit for me, so a tabled this ever-growing project for another time.

Well, this is the year I decided to get serious and finally do something about our family photos!

“Photo progress” has been written on my monthly goal list almost every month since January. Here’s what I’ve been doing with my photos so far:

• deleting the extra/unnecessary photos
• organizing photos by year/month and putting them into a file
• assembling yearly photo books
• deciding which prints to order and hang on our walls

Some months, I’ve made a lot of progress, other months, not so much. But, I am getting there… little by little!

So, here is what I have decided to do with our photos, plus my new system going forward!

How I’m Organizing our Family Photos

Organizing Digital Photos Chronologically by Year and Month

All my digital photos (from the past five years) are being organized by year and then by month. There is one file folder for each year, and inside that file there are 12 more folders for each month of the year with the photos that were taken during that time frame. These files are getting backed up elsewhere in case of a computer crash.

Creating Shutterfly Photo Books

As much as I love traditional photos books, I realized quickly that they take up WAY too much space (and thinking of all the years to come – the space those albums would take up was very overwhelming to me!). I am also a very digital person, I enjoy working and creating on the computer. Several friends recommend Shutterfly photo books to me so I decided to give it a go. So far, I am loving the process (even though it’s very time-consuming catching up from the past five years). I have two photo books completed and a couple others started. I’m just waiting for a good Shutterfly deal to actually purchase the competed books.

Shutterfly also has an app! I haven’t had much experience with the app just yet, but going forward I plan to upload photos at the end of every month and work on my photo book throughout the year, ordering the book once the year is complete.

Organizing Photos at the End of Every Month

I just alluded to this above, but a new monthly habit I’ve been incorporating is a monthly photo organization time. This means, at the end of the month, going through all the photos I took that month, deleting the extras, editing as necessary and uploading them to Shutterfly so I can add them to my photo book! 

If I can manage to stay on top my photos each month, my photo book project(s) will not become a large and daunting task at the end of the year!

Not using Cameras, Just my Phone

I’ve tried using a traditional camera in the past… but soon realized how inconvenient that was, especially when my phone is usually always on me. Not to mention, my phone takes better photos and it’s much easier to organize them!

Ordering Prints to Frame and Hang

I have a few family photos framed and hanging on the wall, but not many. I want to change that soon. There are so many family photos that I love but I rarely get to see because they are just hanging out on my phone. I already have most of the frames I need (my husband got these for me last Christmas) I just need to decide which photos I’m going to display and order them!

For print projects like this, I plan to utilize the photo services from either Staples or Walmart so it’s local and convenient!

So, just to re-cap…

This year I am organizing my back-log of photos and creating photo books from the past several years using Shutterfly. Going forward, I plan to continue taking photos with my phone, go through and organize the photos once a month, and make one photo book each year using Shutterfly.

This is my current project and my new system going forward.

Lest you think I’ve got this totally under control – I still need to decide what I want to do with our son’s baby and childhood photos! That’s a project to figure out at another time! 😉

Final Thoughts

I hope this post has been helpful for you and provided you with a few ideas! If you have a great system for photos, I would love to hear it. Please leave a comment below and share!