I have always been a perfectionist at heart. Tirelessly trying to improve things and get them just right. While some may say that this is a great quality to have, it is both a blessing and a curse. In some areas of my life (i.e. organizing my photos), I found it was paralyzing me, and it was time for me to take control!
start to organize photos
My family photos were just begging to be organized! I had started out putting them all in these amazing leather albums I found at Costco. Sounds like a good idea, right? What I soon realized was that they were going to take up an entire room in my home once they were all filled (I take a lot of photos).
Unfortunately, I do not have the luxury of having an extra room dedicated to photo albums. This mistake was staring at me, almost mocking me. Having already invested a lot of time putting several years worth of photos in these albums. I was stuck!
I wanted my photos organized perfectly. After all, they were treasured memories that held such a special place in my heart. However, my desire to have them organized spectacularly created quite a situation. I did nothing. Nada. Zip. For years. Yep, you heard me right….years.
For an extended period of time, they lived inside my computer and phone and never saw the light of day. It was a source of failure, and the voices of defeat nagged at me whenever I thought about my photos.
Why was I putting off organizing my photos?
Then, I stated to do some soul searching. Why was I avoiding organizing my photos like the plague? I had to start being honest with myself. It became pretty tiring looking at my picture frames that still had the stock photos from the store displayed. It was embarrassing whenever someone came over and asked who those people they didn’t recognize in the frames were.
Getting down to business and actually organizing my photos!
Time for action. I had to formally admit to myself that my current system wasn’t working. That meant removing the photos from the albums. I simply did not have the room to store them, and it was time to face that head on. I needed an organizing system that would be able to store years of photos.
It was time to start searching for what would work for my home. I had to think about the amount of photos I had to store, as well as how I wanted to be able to look at them. After all, it is one thing to have the photos organized, but if they are put away in bins and not really accessible, that defeats the purpose.
Container Store to the Rescue to organize my photos
For me, I found the Iris Photo Storage containers at The Container Store. What I loved about these were that they were flexible enough for my needs. I loved that I could put them by year in portable containers that would hold about 1600 photos. I could take these individual containers out whenever the mood struck.
My trusty label maker also helped me to keep things in order. So, guess who was the star of the show when my daughter needed a baby photo for her yearbook? That’s right, yours truly. I found that baby (pun intended:) in 2 minutes flat. Here is the one I used from The Container Store:
I also loved that my photos weren’t stuck in an album by date. Before this, I painstakingly put them in exact order by day and year. However, what always inevitably happened was that my kids would come home from school with a great photo the teacher took, and I could not put it in order in the album because there was no space. Oh the horror! I then just had albums with some photos in order and some random pictures scrambled up at the end. It was a mess.
My current system for organizing photos
My current system really shined when there was a major error with photos I had ordered from the year 2018. All my previous photos had the date printed on the back. This made putting them in order a snap. Unfortunately, when I ordered my 2018 pics, they had the date the photos were ordered on the back.
Luckily, my flexible system was there to save the day! I decided for the year 2018, it was perfectly acceptable to organize the photos by subject, not by date. I had photos of my kids, pups, travel, etc all ready to be enjoyed in their respective spots.
Overall, what my huge take-away from all of this was that my system didn’t have to be perfect. It just had to work for our needs. When I stopped searching for perfect and started searching for perfect for us, I was able to stop procrastinating and start enjoying our family memories!
You can do it too! Overthinking can be crippling. Figure out what would work for you and your family. Then get started! You will be so glad you did!
Now if you are ready to move on to organizing your child’s artwork and school papers, check out my post here: Organize Artwork and School Papers
Better Homes and Gardens has an amazing article with tons of tips and tricks for your photo storage.
Note: I am happy to report that the stock photos in my home picture frames have now been replaced with fond family memories.
Guide to Organize Your Photos Now!
