02 Mar Spring has Sprung – Time to Spring Clean
We all have printed pictures, digital pictures, slides and videos in various places. Pictures you just know you have, but cannot put your hands on.
Spring is a great time to gather pictures from closets, basements, attics, and storage units. It’s also a great time to find the digital pictures on your devices and on-line, and consolidate the photo collection.
Looking for the pictures, wherever they may be hiding, could be a daunting task. To help you get organized, it would help to create a list or spreadsheet detailing where the pictures are, approximately how many are there, and their medium. This is an example:
Working with the example above, it would be overwhelming to take it on all at once. I would recommend taking bite-size pieces. One way to create manageable pieces is to set the kitchen timer for one hour. Then work in one hour segments, on a schedule, until this task is complete.
Gathering is the first step to organize your pictures. There are several ways to approach this step. You can set aside an area of your house that you do not use often, and prepare a table to hold all your albums, photo boxes, envelopes with photos, and anything else that could hold your photos.
If you do not have a spare bedroom or area for this effort, you can snap a picture of the albums at their location, and post the picture someplace where you will see it, so it’s not “out of sight, out of mind”.
Another approach is to concentrate on one area at a time. This could be one physical area, such as one of the closets, and deal with all the loose photos, boxes, and albums there. Alternatively, you could target the Storage Modes – gathering all the loose photos, then the boxes, and finally, the albums (as an example).
Pictures could also be hiding in other people’s photo collections. You may have relatives that possess old family pictures. Maybe your friends have fun pictures of you or your children doing something memorable.
Regardless of the approach you choose, the one that works best for you, focus on the task at hand – Gathering. Do not allow yourself to get bogged down in looking at the albums or pictures. Staying focused will help you complete the Gathering step in a reasonable amount of time.
Looking at the pictures, and critically deciding what to keep, what to store, and what to toss, is called Sorting. This is the next step in the Photo Organizing process. This will be the topic of a separate blog.
The important thing is to start the Photo Organizing project and spring is a great time to embark on new projects!
If you need help, please contact me at www.PreciousMemsPhoto.com to get guidance or training on how to tackle your Photo Organizing project. We could also discuss your photo needs and set up a project to help you preserve and share your precious memories.
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