You probably already have stacks of boxes of photos jammed into a closet. Why not do some organizing to make that closet a more useful storage area for those photos? It really isn’t a bad idea when you think about it. If you do it right, the photos still end up in the closet, only now you’ll be able to see what you have and enjoy those photos. Here’s how you do it.
1 – Let’s Look at This Year
There’s going to be a few decades worth of photos stacked in those boxes. It’s going to appear like a somewhat impossible task. So, that’s why you need a realistic and easy system in place to get you started. The best thing to do at this point is start with all the photos you have from the past year. This gets you moving forward with a baby step that can easily be handled.
2 – Edit, Edit, Edit
The fast way to edit through the pile of photos from the past year is to go through them and toss out anything that is not worth keeping. That would include photos that are not focused or have some other problems with them. The fifteen copies of the same photo or slightly different photo can probably also end up in the trash.
3 – Separate and Label
Here’s where you start to get the routine of organizing down. When you go through the photos from the past year, try to separate them according to month or season and keep these little piles apart from all other photos. Once you’ve gone through the year pile, put the separated ones in envelopes labeled with the month or season they were taken. This keeps them in order.
4 – Store em’
It’s now back to the photo boxes for the enveloped groups of photos you have just labeled. You can group the envelopes in boxes according to date, event or whatever way you want to be able to cross reference them. Then you can start to put the completed boxes on a shelf in the closet. Closet organizers can help you create additional shelf space.
5 – Share em’
Mini albums are handy little things. Now that you know where some of your favourite photos from the past year are, why not pick a few and put them in an album? The album or albums can sit on a coffee table or bookshelves and provide entertainment for yourself or conversation starters for others who flip through the pages.
6 – Repeat
Okay, now that you have a relatively easy system in place, all you have to do is start doing the same process all over again with another few boxes of the photos in your closet. If you tackle another year’s worth or more, you’ll eventually get to the end and find that it wasn’t so hard to organize your photos. All it took was a plan that was easy to use and follow.
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