how do you organize photos?

Hi friends! Happy Thursday! This week feels like it’s gone by so quickly. The girls have been busy with camp, I’ve been rocking and rolling on some fun stuff for fall (late summer shape up and an updated project coming your way), podcast recording, meeting up with friends, swimming with the girls, and (still) trying to get my life together. I feel like we’ll have a solid routine in place by the time school starts… so we can figure it out all over again. 😉

For today, let’s talk about photo organization. As I’m sure many of you have pics of your kiddos and pets, I have soooooo many photos of the girls. I’ll print them out about once a year (like 300ish of my favorites from the year) to put into photo albums and the rest of them sit either on my phone or computer, collecting virtual dust. I have no idea how to organize them into folders so we can look back on them later. Just thinking about one of the girls as a teenager asking me to find a photo of “x” was enough to make me break out in hives. So, I put the call out on Instagram Stories for halp.

Turns out that SO many of you are in the same boat! We love taking pictures but have no clue what to do with them afterwards.

Some reader friends shared some awesome suggestions.

Here they are:

– Google photos. These can be sorted by date, place, face, etc. If you have the app on your phone, it will back up your photos and you can search them later. (Like I could search for “Livi 2017”)

– Amazon photos. Can also be sorted by name, date, place, etc.

– Shutterfly. Make photos for month and year and at the end of the month upload everything from that month. 

– Chatbooks. Print Instagram, Facebook, and phone photos for $10 per book.

– Groovebook. It’s $3.99/month and you get 100 pictures printed in a book. 

– Walgreens. Upload photos into albums and print. (This is what I currently do..very sporadically.. and they always have coupon codes online.) 

 

After reading through the suggestions, here’s what I’m thinking I’ll do:

-Add the Google photos app to my phone and remember to sync it each month.

-Every month, pick my favorite photos and add to a Walgreens album.

-At the end of the year, I’ll print out the Walgreen’s albums and put into a physical photo album. (The girls love looking at them.)

-Make the girls each their own Chatbooks at the end of the year. 

I feel a sense of relief just typing that out! ALL I needed was a strategy.

So, tell me friends: do photos stress you out? Do you have a system in place to organize them, or have you just been winging it?

I’d love to hear what you do!

xoxo

Gina

PS. The Nordstrom Anniversary Sale Early Access started today!!! (It’s early shopping for cardholders and public access is next week. I’ll share my top picks next week.)

PPS. Check out this week’s podcast episode with Emily Field RD here!