One time I took a poll on Instagram on how many photos people have on their phones. I thought my number of 4k+ was absolutely ridiculous, only to have people message me that their photos numbered at 5K, 9K, and even one person said 41K. Crazy! With all the photos we take now days, it can be really hard to want to start organizing them-it seems like such a daunting task, especially with thousands of photos! I totally get it, and I’m going over some quick tips to get you started so you can get those photos organized.

the why

You might be wondering what the point is, especially when your phone organizes everything by date anyways. There are a couple of reasons in my mind why it’s beneficial to have some sort of system when it comes to photos. If you’re anything like me, you’ve got photos from multiple sources on multiple devices whether it’s an old digital camera on your computer or snapshots on your phone. If you ever want to do anything with those photos, it’s suuuper helpful to have them all in one place. The other reason is even if you only take photos on your phone, you better bet a whole bunch of garbage is interspersed with all your precious memories. I have random pictures that people text me in my folders, as well as screenshots of things I need to remember, books I want to read, quick tips on things I’m learning about, and on and on. It’s a lot easier to find what you’re looking for when you don’t have to wade through a bunch of random garbage first.
So now that I’ve (hopefully) convinced you, let’s get into those tips!

Quick tip #1

Just get started. You don’t want to deal with going through thousands of photos? Great. Start with this year, figure out a system and keep going from this point. Don’t get caught in the all or nothing trap.

Quick tip #2

Figure out a system that will work for you-it shouldn’t be too complicated or take too much thought. I organize by year, then month, then special events if applicable. This means that sometimes when you open a month folder it’s juts photos, other times there are additional folders labeled “Utah Trip” or “Emmett’s birthday.” I’ve found that’s the easiest way to keep everything organized and not cluttered, but you could also go by themes-birthdays, vacations, everyday life, and so on, and then by year or month. However you decide to do it, stick to it but don’t overthink it.

Quick tip #3

Put numbers in front of your files to keep them in the order you want. Maybe this is something you’re already doing, but this literally changed my life when I saw this, ha! Before I would have all the months, but they would be in alphabetical order. It worked, but it wasn’t the most efficient. Now I name my files “1-January,” “2-February” and so forth and they all stay in order and my brain is happy.

Quick tip #4

When it comes to your cellphone pictures, decide if you want to just back them up on the cloud or if you also want to download them to a desktop or laptop. For me what makes the most sense is to download my photos from the cloud to my desktop so that all my photos from, say, a cruise are in the same folder whether I took them from my phone, my camera, or someone else took them and sent them to me later. If you don’t decide to download, you’ll have to commit to regularly cleaning out your photos folder to get rid of all the junk, and to putting stuff into folders to make it easier to find.

Quick tip #5

Backup, backup, backup. Make sure that wherever your photos are, they are backed up! I have a cloud backup for my cellphone and my desktop, and an external hard drive backup as well. I have had external hard drives fail, phones get lost or go in pools, or computers break down and have lost photos because of it. I have vowed to never lose a photo again.

Quick tip #6

Regularly delete photos! I touched on this earlier, but those ten pictures you took of your kid smiling with the first day of school sign that all look practically identical? Yeah, you don’t need all those. It just creates decision fatigue later down the line when you need to use that photo for something and have to go through TEN to find the best one. Keep on top of clearing out the junk so it doesn’t pile up-you can make it part of a routine (like when you’re waiting in the pickup line) or set a reminder for yourself to do it regularly. (I need to work on this one!)

There you have it! Some super quick and easy tips to get you started on clearing out digital junk and getting those photos organized. If you want to get more into the nitty gritty of how I do this and what backup systems I use, I have a free guide for you! It’ll help take the thinking out of getting started and give you some real concrete steps to get you going. I don’t gatekeep, so literally everything I do to stay organized is in this guide!