Losing precious memories is something we all dread. Whether it’s due to a natural disaster, a faulty device, or just plain old forgetting, it can be devastating.

But there’s no need to worry! You can ensure your photos are always safe and sound with a little organization. Check out these photo organizing tips to never lose another memory again.

Organizing Digital Photos

Organizing your digital photos may seem daunting, but it’s actually quite simple! Follow these steps to get started:

1) Thin the Herd

Delete photos to eliminate bad shots, blurry images, duplicates, and old boyfriends. Deleting unnecessary photos will help you keep only your best pictures and make finding the ones you’re looking for easier.

If you absolutely can’t bear to delete photos completely, at least create a “Bad Shots” folder and move your rejects into there. Starting with fewer photos to organize will help make the next step quicker and easier.

2) Get Organized with Folders

Create folders for different topics, events, pets, or people. This will help you keep your photos sorted and easy to find.

Apple’s Photo app and Google Photos can help you organize your photos. They’ll automatically analyze your images to make them searchable by keywords and group them into albums by location and person.

To organizes your photos on your computer, make a folder for each year. Then inside each year folder, create subfolders for each month. Use the number for the month rather than the name so they’ll sort in order. For example, use “07” instead of “July.” Inside the month folders, create themed subfolders like Sue’s 60th Birthday, California Vacation, or Christmas.

Organizing your photo this way will make it easy to find a specific picture later.

3) Back up your photos regularly.

I recommend the first of every month. This step is crucial to keeping your photos safe in case something happens to your device.

Upload them to a cloud storage service like iCloud, Google Drive, or Dropbox. These services will keep your photos safe and accessible from anywhere.

Consider saving photos to an external hard drive for an added backup. God forbid something happens to one of these cloud storage services. An external hard drive could get damaged or lost in a fire. So, it’s good to have both cloud storage and a physical drive.

4) Print out your most precious photos.

Printing photos is another form of backup. But it’s also nice to have physical copies of sentimental photos. You can put them on the wall or in a photo album.

Consider services such as Shutterfly, Amazon Print, Walmart Photo, Snapfish, CVS Photo, Walgreens Photo, Nations Photo Lab, or Printique (formerly known as AdoramaPix)

Organizing Physical Photos

If you’re like me, you have a lot of boxes of physical photos. It’s time to get them organized so you can actually enjoy them!

Here are a few tips:

1. Make sure they’re all in one place. This seems obvious, but it’s essential. Once you have all your photos in one spot, you can start sorting them.

2. Sort by date. Sorting by date is the easiest way to organize your photos. You can either keep them in chronological order or reverse chronological order. I prefer chronological because it tells a story that way. But it’s up to you!

1. Get acid-free storage boxes or albums to store your pictures in. Acid-free will help prevent them from damage over time.

2. Label your pictures so you can easily find them later. This is especially helpful if you have a lot of pictures.

3. Make copies of your photos. You can do this by scanning them or taking digital photographs of them. This way, you’ll always have a backup. Organize your scanned images using the tips in the first section of this blog post.

Following these tips will help you keep your photos safe and sound for years to come. So don’t wait. Get started today!