Do you have a lot of photos lying around and don’t know what to do with them? Is your phone running out of storage space because of you have so many photos stored in it? What do you do with all your photos?

Here are some tips for organizing old and new photos.

Store Electronically In Apps

There are many ways to store and organize photos electronically. I have my photos stored in 3 different places. They are automatically uploaded once a picture is taken on my phone. The sources I choose to keep photos stored are dropbox, snapfish and G Cloud. There are other places you can store photos as well, like facebook, picasa, google drive and more. A few things to consider when organizinng photos.

Delete Duplicates and Bad Photos

First, go through all your photos and delete any that are blurry or flawed. Remove any photos that are duplicates or that you don’t like. I often have 6 to 7 pictures of the same image because I take them from different angles. I will usually chose 1 to 2 of the best image and delete the rest. Once you have removed all unwanted photos you are are now ready to organize them into files.

Organize Into Albums Or Files

Since I travel a lot, my photos are usually organized by trip. I will create a folder for each trip or place I visited and add the date. For example: Lincoln City May 2016. Often times when I take a road trip, I visit multiple places. I prefer to create a folder for each place/hike/area within the trip. You can organize your pictures however you choose. For example, let’s say you go to Hawaii for a week and visit several islands. You can either create one folder for all your Hawaii pics or you can create a folder for each island you visited.

What About Paper Photos?

Storing and organizing photos is all good and dandy but what about those of us who like to keep the actual paper photos? I prefer to do both. One of my hobbies is scrapbooking and I keep my favorite photos in scrapbooks. If you prefer paper photos, there are several ways to store and organize them. One way is by putting the photos into scrapbooks or photo albums. Another way is by keeping them in file folders or photo storage boxes. If you really want to preserve them, I recommend acid free photo albums or water and fireproof boxes. You will want to use the same system as you would with digital photos. You can organize them by month and year, holiday, trip, memorable moments, etc.

Any system will work as long as it is one that works for you and helps you find your photos when you need them. As I stated above, I keep mine in scrapbooks and they are organized by specific events or trips. I have one with highschool memories, one for college, one with family pics organized by year and the rest are vacations or trips I took. Photos are precious and a good way to store our favorite memories. Whether you decide to store them digitally or not is up to you. The important thing to remember is to keep them organized and have fun.