by Eulalia Prynn

Created on: October 26, 2009

Ah, getting organized; the stumbling block of too many artistic and crafty projects. But it can be fun to get organized, and organizing your family photos gives you an opportunity to relive some of those fun family experiences. It can be a fun project to get the kids involved in; make a day of it. Have some snacks, listen to some music, and gather round the photo albums and boxes crammed with family memories and get to it.

Scrapbooking is a fun and beautiful way to display your treasured family moments and memorabilia, but it's not always easy to get those mementos organized before you start. First, you have to select your storage method. Most of my photos are digital, and thus stored on my computer in specific files. I also have some in photo boxes with tabs, and a few in large envelopes (mostly the professional ones). Each is labeled and the photos are generally in time frame order. Here are a few methods of organizing and storing family photos.

-General organization-

I find that it is easiest for me to have my photographs organized in a few categories, as follows: Monthly (photos taken in September 2009, for example, are in a folder for Sept 2009), and event or trip specific files (so, if we went to Grandma's house, it would be labeled with the date, and the grandparent visited; all photos taken on said trip would be located in this folder). I have, in the past, placed photos of family and friends (outside of my immediate household) in specific files, but it became easier simply to organize them by month taken, instead of getting that specific. While this may be a method that works for others, I found it to be too tedious.

-Types of storage for photos-

*Electronic* Due to the age of technology and quality of photographs taken in digital, most of my photos are not in print, but on some sort of electronic storage device. I have a few files on my laptop in which I keep the immediate photos to be used or uploaded to a social web page (such as our family blog, or my facebook profile) to be shared. Otherwise, I have many photographs on portable memory drives (also known as Thumb Drives or Flash Drives). There is a vast range of brands and storage sizes for these handy little devices from 64mb (mega bites) or several gigs (which is much larger than a mb). I have three different thumb drives in varying sizes. NOTE: a fun way to edit your photos is through a website called picnik.com. For free, you can upload five photos at a time and do such simple edits as cropping

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