Not all of them of course, but a good many. A few months ago, I shared on Facebook that I came back from our 10-day Christmas trip to Ireland with over 1,000 photos. And once again, I came back from a holiday weekend with 500+ photos on my camera. In just three days, I took 500 DSLR photos and another 100 or so on my iPhone, plus videos. Do you think I NEED 600+ photos to document my 3-day Easter weekend? NOT.A.CHANCE. I have two gorgeous and photogenic children, but I don’t need every single picture I’ve ever taken of them. All I’ll do is clog up the memory on my computer and overwhelm myself the next time I go to make a photo book or slideshow.

Here’s the thing, keep the meaningful photos, maybe even a few of the blurry ones if they help tell your story. But don’t keep 15 pictures of the same scene, when you were just trying to get the right angle or the best expressions. And don’t just keep the best ones, either. I have a series of pictures of my daughter from Christmas and there’s not a smile to be found, but I managed to capture the most hilarious set of facial expressions and I know she’ll enjoy seeing them as she grows older.

It may be too much to ask, but try to downsize your photos by a half. Or at least by a quarter. You won’t regret it and neither will your computer.

Get in the habit of following these three simple steps after each photo-taking event:

1. UPLOAD your photos to your computer. (Don’t just keep them on the memory card and buy a new one.)
2. Review each and every picture and mark down the obvious deletes.
3. Delete the photos on that list. (You can DO it!!!)

If you're feeling particularly daring, you can repeat steps 2 & 3 a few times to pare down your photos even more.

I promise if you can get in this habit each and every time you return home, you will find that your digital photo collection is much more manageable and you aren’t wasting valuable storage space on photos you’ll most likely never use.

If the thought of deleting your photos has you paralyzed with fear, contact me any time.  I'm here to support you!

This post has joined the Blog Hop at A Dish of Daily Life.

Most of us live in a hectic, highly-scheduled world. We are bound by clocks and alarms. And from this perspective, we attempt to organize our lifetime of photos. But we get hung up on TIME. Your goal of organizing your lifetime of photos seems too overwhelming and it gets tabled for later.

I’m here to tell you a little secret. When it comes to organizing your photo collection, throw time out the window. Don’t get hung up trying to puzzle together days, months, years, even decades. You’ll make yourself crazy and won’t get anything accomplished.

The easiest way to start thinking about your photos is in categories. Birthdays, holidays, weddings, vacations, immediate family, extended family. You get the picture. While every family will have a different set of categories, it is MUCH easier to pour over thousands of family photos within the context of categories. Your category piles will start to build and you won’t waste any time struggling to remember the date & year of your Uncle Joe’s wedding.

Think about it. When you need to find a specific picture, you wouldn’t think, “I need to find that picture of my sister taken on April 5, 1973.” You think, “I remember a great picture of my sister taken at Uncle Joe’s wedding.” So when your photo organizing project is complete, you can easily open your archival-quality storage box, find the weddings section, then find the tab that says “Uncle Joe’s Wedding” and voilà! There’s that great pic of your sister!

This one tip alone will make it so much easier for you to start your photo organizing project, but if you still feel overwhelmed by the sheer VOLUME of photos, just remember I’m here to help. Contact me any time!

This was the scene in the court next to mine earlier this evening. A house engulfed in flames in a matter of minutes. Thankfully, the two residents who were home at the time got out safely. But guess what was the first thing she mentioned after saying all was lost? Her PICTURES. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, when tragedy strikes, what people want most are their pictures, not their clothes, their jewelry, their furniture. Their PICTURES. And sadly, so many of us don’t take the time to BACK UP our photo collections until it’s too late. 

Here are a few steps to take to protect your non-digital photo collection:

1) For the boxes and bags of prints you have from the pre-digital days, possibly scattered all over your house, gather them all in one place.
2) Next, commit the time to sorting through and organizing them.
3) Once organized, put them in an archival storage box that is easily accessible to grab in case of emergency. 
4) Another option with prints is to hire a reputable company like FotoBridge to scan them all to digital so they can be backed up along with the rest. 

For your digital photo collection, it’s common advice now to back up your digital files in at least three places. Two of those should be off site and at least one as far removed from you geographically as possible should disaster strike.

Here are several options for backing up your digital files:

1) Use an external hard drive (EHD) like PictureKeeper, that makes it ridiculously easy to collect ALL the digital images from your computer. Then keep the EHD either in a fire-proof safe, a safe deposit box or even send to a friend to store for you.
2) Use a cloud storage service like Carbonite or This Life which will cover you for remote location storage.
3) Burn your images to archival-quality DVDs like these from MAM-A and, again, put them in a fire-proof safe, a safe deposit box or a friend's house. 

I'm in this business because I care about protecting your family's cherished memories. I don't want to see another family in tears because they've lost everything, including their photos. I implore you to develop a back-up plan for your photo collection in the event of a catastrophe. We never want to think it could happen to us, but there's no harm in planning for the worst. If tragedy were to strike, you’ll be crying about your lost “stuff,” but feeling grateful that your photos are safe off site and can be recovered with ease.

This post has joined the Let's Get Organized Blog Hop over at Dinosaur Superhero Mommy's site.

I've been meaning to do this for my children for YEARS. I attempt to keep the multitude of toys organized by using these shoebox-size storage bins from Target. But I've never gotten around to actually labeling them with what's inside. Check out this blog post on how to use photos to label your children's toys. It might mean the difference between your toddler's room being a mess or being spotless!