Organizational Tips: Scrapbook Part 1

This month I am focusing each week's organizational tips on scrapbooking. Each week will focus on a different aspect of scrapbooking from photo and project storage to scheduling time to scrapbook. I am not an avid photographer, but many of my friends, family, coworkers, and fellow crafters are with hundreds of pictures being taken every couple of month. While not all photos being taken on their cameras are worth printing and scrapbooking, many are and like them I have these photos stored on various devices. Photos, whether they are worthy or not, end up taking a lot of space on cameras, phones, tablets, computers, and various other locations in print form. Arguably, photos like anything else, can feel overwhelming when they begin to accumulate. Photos, unlike other items we tend to accumulate, can exist in two forms print and digital. Digital photos can then exist on memory cards, USB drives, CDs, DVDs, phones, tablets, and computers. 

There are many ways to organize photos so these are a few of my favorite organizational tips for photos, print and digital. Tip #1: Gather all of your printed pictures and organize your pictures according to theme and year. Pictures you intend to scrapbook soon should be pulled out and grouped according to your scrapbook page. I will post tips for organizing these photos in week 3. There are a few ways to organize the rest of the photos. The first is a photo box with dividers for years and themes. The second is an accordion style photo folder that is predivided. I use the photo folder for photos likely to be scrapbooked first. This photo storage works ok for me, but I am looking for storage that is resistant to fire and weather damage. This concern over fire and weather damage is why many of my photos are also loaded onto my computer and occasionally on CDs as well. 

Tip #2: Organize digital photos into folders on your computer by year and theme. Pictures on my computer are organized under a large folder labeled Pictures with several other folders labeled inside there. These pictures aren't perfectly organized, but I am happy with the progress being made. The sub folders in the Pictures folder have titles such as Christmas 2008, Easter 2013, and SF Anniversary Trip 2011. I can then organize all of the Christmas sub folders into a larger folder along with other folders for anniversary trips, holidays, and special events. At one point I had organized my photos by the people in the pictures, but this wasn't an efficient means of organization. Bonus Tip: Upload your photos to an online website, like Shutterfly or Photobucket, or load on a USB Drive to protect your pictures from human error and computer crashes.

Tip #3: Organize your USB drives, CDs, and DVDs that contain photos with your print photos. This will save you time when you're looking for a specific print. There are great DIYs for organizing your USB Drives, if you want to see tutorial for one of these DIYs comment below.