Organizing Photographs | Giftie Etcetera: Organizing Photographs

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Organizing Photographs

I don't store much under my beds. I like the idea of hidden storage, but I have wicked asthma, so anything I drag out from under the bed tends to bring on a dusty, oxygen-deprived gasping for air episode. I've decided to reserve my under bed space for one purpose - pictures.

1. Go shopping for storage solutions.

I don't often recommend spending money to organize. But there is just no other way to deal with photographs, especially if you, like me, are too lazy to make nice photo albums.


I purchased two under bed containers on clearance. (They usually go on clearance around Christmas or right after and again at back-to-school time.) I also got a big plastic box and the small plastic basket pictured below. Finally, I got some photo boxes.


2. Clear out the area under the bed.

3. Sort the items into things that need to be in climate control (under the bed) and things that can go in outside, shed storage (like old yearbooks). Box them up.


4. Use photo boxes to keep loose photographs together.


5. Bring big boxes to outdoor shed.


6. Put flat boxes under bed.


And the most important step...

7. Keep a small basket somewhere to hold any new photos until you can process them into the appropriate box.


Mine goes right under my make-up table in the bedroom because it is near the photo boxes.


This basket is very important because you don't want to have to pull the photographs out from under the bed all the time. When the basket gets about half full, I pull out the photo boxes and file the pictures in the front of a photo box.

Etcetera.

6 comments:

pattygardner.com said...

I don't do photo albums either. I put all mine by date in photo boxes. Although, I don't print them out very often anymore. Now I need to figure out how to handle the digital photos so they're organized and accessible. But not today.

Erin said...

Have you thought about putting your pictures in a Project Life albums? You don't have to add words or stories. Hobby Lobby sells photo sleeves that hold 6 4x6 photos on each page. You just slide photos into sleeves. Then you/and or your kids and family can flip through photos!

yezenia said...

Boxes of your photos in an outdoor shed? Noooooo!

yezenia said...

Seriously, put your photos higher up just in case of flooding. Ask me how I know. : (

Anne said...

Seems to me you should call this "Containerizing your Photos" because you didn't organize a thing. If they were organized, they would be easily accessible. Just having everything of one kind on one place doesn't make it accessible. What if you have to find specific photos for your kid's school project? Just having them all in one box still means you have to go through them one at a time to find the right one. Photos should be organized by time and person or event for easy reference.

Giftie Etcetera said...

Anne - excellent point. Almost all of my photos are already on-line and backed up, since this is only about putting the hard copies where we can look at them and use them as back-up for the e-copies. But when a school assignment happens, I generally turn to electronic resources!