Archives for 2009

This month’s project for the Organizing Round-Up was definitely something I had been putting off for a while: Pictures and Memorabilia. I had a ton of pictures without a permanant home, and I also had a ton of scrapbook supplies and just….junk to go through. So while I was putting pictures into books, I felt it was the perfect time to go through this stuff too.

I started with a box full of pictures:

And a small drawer full of pictures:

And here’s a couple more stacks…

I went through all the pictures and placed them in order by date, and I’ve now tucked them away in these books:

The “doubles,” including a bunch of extra wedding photos were placed in this blue box, which is much smaller than the brown one from the top. And they were all placed in order with the envelopes labeled.

Now for the challenge. I give you the drawers of death. In these drawers was a combination of scrapbook paper, stickers, empty photo albums, greeting cards, office supplies, keepsake items from birthday parties and other events, even a few cds, and some other stuff. They’ve been hiding out in my closet (of all places) for the last two years, and it was time for this stuff to go!

(I took pictures of the three individual drawers as well as the contents of the blue box on top, but you really couldn’t tell much about them, so I’m leaving these out of the post.)

This set of drawers was completely emptyed! It’s a miracle! It had been a cluttered mess for about 2 years, and I finally tackled it. (Now I’m using this set of drawers to store some of my clothes. Yay!)

Now I know your wondering what happened to the contents. First of all, there were a few really nice albums that were empty. So I removed these and placed them on a bookshelf in my office for future use.

The few keepsakes items I had were placed in a little plastic shoebox. The greeting cards were filed away in my file cabinet. (Eventually I’m going to put the cards in a book and possibly use some of them for projects.)

And the office supplies and a lot of the other items were either thrown away, placed in the yard sale box, or moved to various locations in my office. (In fact, at this time, I also took the opportunity to organize my extra/reserve office supplies, which I’ll have to share at a later time.)

I also had a whole shoebox of these little photo books that come with your prints. Over half of these had photos in them until last year when I decided to put them into large albums. Now I have no use for these, so I placed them in the yard sale box.

And all my scrapbooking supplies are now in this more compact 12X12 3-drawer bin.

Head over to Org Junkie to see how others organized their pictures and memorbilia. And don’t forget to read my post on Picture Organizing Tips.

-Jerri

• Choose a system and stick to it. Decide if you want to use albums, scrapbooks, or both, and make it a commitment to stick to the system you choose.
• Before you start to organize your photos into books, decide how you want to organize the photos and the books. (Is there a theme? Will you have a scrapbook for each kid? Will you be organizing your books by year? How many events do you want to be contained in the book? How many pictures do you have versus the space available in your albums?)
• Place limits on how many pictures you print from each event.
• Place photos in album or scrapbook as soon as possible to avoid accumulating stacks of pictures.
• Plan a day each week or each month to have a scrapbooking session. This can be as short as an hour or even just 30 minutes! Put it on your calendar like a a regular appointment and make it a priority. If you plan regular sessions, it will prevent you from accumulating massive stacks of pictures to organize.
• Write dates and other relevenat information on the back of photos. Even if you have the best memory, you may not always remember everything. Plus, your kids will have the photos long after you’re gone and they may want this information.
• Date and label your albums.
• If you keep doubles or extra copies of photos, be sure that these are organized in a photo box. I keep mine in the original envelopes they come in, and I label the packets and place them in order by date into the photo boxes.

Dealing with Digital Photos

• Plan times to upload pictures from your digital camera.
• Don’t let too much time pass between uploads or you will be overwhelmed when you start to organize your photos.
• Immediately place your newly uploaded photos into folders and sub-folders.
• Delete bad or unnessesary photos before or after uploading.
• Always keep an extra thumb drive on hand, in case your current one gets full.
• If you’re using photos for your website or a project, upload them to photobucket, flickr, or another photo site. This way you can access them anytime, and you can delete them from your computer or thumb drive, leaving more space for your family photos.

-Jerri



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I’m linking this post to WFMW at We Are That Family