Photo Storage

Have some goals to organize your photos this year?  Have a pile of photos a mile high and don’t know how you’ll ever get through them all?  What about all that artwork that your kids seem to hold onto?  Where are you going to store ALL THAT STUFF?  Well today I want to share with you some ways I have chosen to organize my photos and needless to say I’m never turning back.

As you can tell from the above picture, I used to organize my photos in the cheap Walmart photo albums, at least I did when I found the time.  However, when I married my hubby, he had stacks and stacks of loose photos, many without dates or names.  I knew I wouldn’t have the time or enough knowledge of my hubby’s past to put them all into enjoyable photo albums so instead I chose something more simple–photo boxes.

I bought two photo boxes at Walmart–1 for 8 x 10 photos and the other for 5×7 or smaller photos.  Next, I bought some 5×7 index cards.  When I went home I then sorted all my loose photos by year as best I could and then divided them with the 5×7 index cards labeled by year.  I placed all the smaller photos in year order in the 5×7 photo box and any large photos I put loosely in the large photo box.  This saved me from having to label every photo with a date and will help me to be able to find loose photos quickly if I need too in the future.

Next came the process of deciding how I was going to handle all of my new photos we would be compiling as a family. After much looking I decided to go the digital route.  I have become a HUGE fan of Shutterfly. In fact, I’ve now used Shutterfly for every photo album from our wedding album to the kids albums.  They are wonderful and often have some pretty good sales.

I also love the fact that I can usually knock out a cute looking photo album in a matter of a few hours instead of a few days, weeks or months.  AND, my photo albums and pics stay online as long as I have an account with them.  So, God-forbid that we should have a fire or tornado or some other natural disaster that would cause me to loose all our precious photos, I now know I can go back to Shutterfly to replace them all.  In addition, if you are into digiscrap, you can always create your own pages off-line and upload them into their templates to make a wonderful book as well.

But alas, I digress. Sorry for the pitch line but I seriously do like using their product (and no, I am not compensated in any way for saying so).  Anyway, now instead of keeping tons of print photos, I just put them into a Shutterfly album.  And, instead of keeping all that LOVELY artwork my daughter creates, I just take pictures of it and add that to her photo album as well.

I can also include pictures of an any certificates or awards.

And the best part, Peanut LOVES looking at her albums often.

I also put a CD in the back of each album with all the photos that are from that year so if later, Teacup needs a photo from when she was a baby and I don’t have a copy readily available in my loose photo box, I can pop in the CD from the back of her baby album and print off a new photo without having to spend hours looking for it on my computer files or elsewhere.

And that’s it.  All done in a few hours.  Photos are now easy to find in the future, they take up much less space on my shelves, and they look cute on the coffee table as well.