🖼 Simplifying and Decluttering Photos 👨‍👩‍👧 (Family Minimalism 2019) 

Long ago, someone might have had a picture of themselves as a toddler, maybe a wedding picture, and one in their older years. I actually hate that today we are drowning in pictures. The only time I look at my pics is when I want to declutter them. I'm probably an anomaly in this smart phone selfie world.

I went through 5 large boxes of photos with my mom. We made 9 albums (one for each of her kids) starting with early photos of mom and dad and then family photos as each child came along. We used an early school photo of the child on the front of their album. Then we sorted all the other photos by each kid and put them into individual zippered cases from the dollar store. Mom gave each of us an album and our case for Christmas that year. Not only did we get rid of the photos, but I heard wonderful memories from my mother. I then started talking with her 1 afternoon each week and by the next Christmas she was able to give each of us and all her grandkids a book of her life story that I helped her write. I got to know her as a strong women, not just as my mother.

Conquering a backlog of family photos can take years, but it is worth the effort! They are one of the most cherished things I have seen passed on from one generation to the next. 👴👵 More than any physical item, except the family Bible. 📸 Now that we have our family photos organized (from multiple generations...it took years!!), I've learned two tricks to never let things get out of control again. First, we purpose to take fewer photos at each event and for vacations, and focus instead on being present with family. And then on the first of every month we clear off our phones and camera, transferring all the digital photos onto the computer. Everything gets organized by month and then by event, and poor quality pics get deleted. When I create an annual scrapbook at the end of the year, it goes so much more smoothy now! 🖼️

It's helpful to keep in mind that up until the last century, people just had to remember their memories without ANY photos.

I have basically binge watched all your videos this last week. I am a SAHM. We have 7 children - his/hers/ours. Our 3 youngest have Autism. Over the last 3 years my Mother, Father and last living Grandparent all passed away. Yes, its a lot to process. But you can imagine...I inherited ALL of the furniture and photos and décor and clothing etc. etc. from my Mom and her Mom...I am the only daughter. As a result of that...along with therapy schedules and children who don't function well...I am become pretty overwhelmingly buried. My biggest obstacle was WHAT to throw out and WHAT to keep. I have the idea of "passing things down" because I am after all the last one that can. For the purpose of this video lets just cover the photos. I received thousands of family photos dating back 5 generations! Beautiful old shots of my 5th Great Grandmother in the late 1800's. I am a book lover and a lover of history. I didn't want to toss any of the photos...but I had to start somewhere. One thing I did was sort by decade. In my grandmothers generation, they always wrote on the photos, so many have dates. Next I separated the people I knew and didn't know. Then I had to look through albums to find duplicates. This process took months. I spread out on a large table and then had a cousin come over to take some and to verify certain people. Long story short, I decided to make an album/scrapbook of all the Grandmothers...including their stories (found on various other documents and journals). That way my daughters can learn where we came from through the eyes of each grandmother. The rest of the "random" photos I have sorted by shape and size...and color vs. black and white. I have tossed all blurry photos...or unattractive shots...OMG and scenary pictures! How many mountain and ocean pictures did my mother need! lol. Thank you for your cheerful spirit and your time in making such detailed organization tips. I am making my husband watch these next :)

I did the exact opposite. I took all the photo albums and took the photos out and put them in photo boxes that take up less space, protect the photos better and I have them in order. We always got doubles, so I gave the boys their childhood photos and we still have a set here.

My neighbor includes old photos in the birthday and holiday cards she sends to friends and family. I think it's a great idea I hope to try this year.

I find that photo books are really the solution for our family to enjoy the digital mountain of photos. Each year, I pick the highlight pictures for our family and create one album as soon as there's a great coupon available. For the paper photos, I radically eliminated photos that show buildings, landscapes etc. and only kept photos that captured the spirit of the event or vacation and that had loved ones in it. If I ever feel the need to look at pictures of the Eiffel Tour or a certain beach, there are thousands available online in better quality.

My mom past away 5 yearss ago and I'm still putting off going through her photos. My parents traveled and after my dad passed she continued to travel with groups. The pictures are numerous. Not to mention family pics. My criteria for what I keep in this ...... if the picture makes me smile, I keep it. I've started going through one album a week because trying to do it all at once was to emotional. I hope to be through them all by the fall. 😘

Thank you so much! I didn't know how and where to start. Your idea of not putting the photos in chronological order was so good for me. It gave me a big push to start. I loved your video, thanks again.❤

I made photo cubes from our loose favorite photos. I sand and stain wood cubes, mod podge photos onto the cubes and display them in crystal bowls, vases, etc. Each cube holds 6 pictures. Seeing them on the coffee table makes me smile. 😊

When we were selling our family home to downsize to a very small house, I was motivated to declutter the photos. I made an individual album for each child, my husband and myself. Then another one for special occasions ( holidays, vacations, graduations) and then one for just everyday life, so 7 in total. I kept the photos to 200 per individual in their personal album. EVERYTHING else was divided up and given to the grandparents and our grown children. What was crucial to this step was knowing that I only have about 20 photos from my own childhood, but it’s enough. So I was confident that 200 would be plenty. 😂

"Children want to be noticed and know where they fit in." This is going up in my craft room. I've been struggling with how to scrapbook my step children (we are at a hard place right now.) This gave me a lot of clarity on why/how to scrapbook our family!

Yes! Thank you thank you thank you for not just saying we should scan them! I also LOVE being able to physically flip through an album, and I find I do it more than looking through pictures on my computer. In terms of how to sort them, my dad ALWAYS said that nobody will care about landscape pictures, only about the people in pictures. I didn't understand that when I was younger, but now I do. It also helps keep me in check with how many pictures I actually even take to begin with. If someone isn't in the shot, I try not to take it. I think being conscious of how many pictures we're taking AS we take them is incredibly important in managing the inventory later. It's the same concept of only bringing really quality items into your house, but we don't apply it to taking pictures for some reason. We got a really big album of every single wedding picture made because I didn't pay all that money to have the pictures sit on a computer! I have looked at it with friends and family members so many times, and it was 100% worth the time and cost. I'm super curious to hear your take on digital pictures because that's where I'm overwhelmed. I would love to make them into albums, but I struggle with actually doing that.

I want to be able to grab the photo albums & run if I have to. So, I'm taking every one out of the frames and getting them ready for when I have the right kind of albums. A nice seated organizing project.

Scanning is overwhelming to me also. Chronological order was important to me so I took 3 months to go through every photo and discard and organize. It was a bit painful but oh so very rewarding and worth every minute of it! We do enjoy going through them as a family 😊

I did a major organizing of our photos in the Winter. I pulled all the photographs out of their bulky padded albums, which I gave away. I purged as I went; getting rid of all duplicates, poor quality, unflattering, and forgotten/incomprehensible photographs. All the photographs were stacked in order, and set into storage boxes which my husband took to work. There he scanned them onto a cd at high speed with the photocopier. We made copies of these discs for each of our four adult kids and put them with our Will. Then for good measure I took down the shelf that had held those forty years of photo albums. Done.

I watch your videos with my 6 year old and whenever you say a thumbs up is the best compliment, she actually gives you a physical thumbs up while smiling at the screen. It's the best! So know there is always another thumbs up added to your total, probably the best one of all... 😊

I like digital photo frames. With just (one or two) special photos. Kids, weddings, family pet, brother, sister, parents, grandparents. That's it.

Thank you! I’ve been so overwhelmed with all the photos. I’m an only child and I’ve inherited both sides of my grandparents photos, my parents and my husbands family photos. I’m pretty sure my kids don’t want to be left with thousands of photos in boxes. I also stress out thinking about trying to get them in chronological order, so I like the idea of not worrying about that because it seems like an impossible task.

I started scrapbooking when I was 11 and it was my hobby for years. I stopped about 5 years ago bc we moved into an apartment and I lost my craft room so it was inconvenient to search for every tool, embellishment, or paper I needed and eventually everything was packed up in storage. Now I have a craft room again but I started minimizing about 3 years ago and now I don't want scrapbooks lol. I dont want an entire book for 1 event. I have so many already. Although I do have one 12X12 for my high school years. I did a 1 or 2 page spread for special occasions and I get alot of enjoyment from that one. But I have scrapbooks for anything and everything that I don't find enjoyment in. Now I'd rather frame 1 or 2 nice photos from an event or occasion and put them on the wall and make a nice statement wall with family photos so they can be seen and enjoyed all the time. But I feel bad getting rid of the old scrapbooks I already have even though I don't want them lol

I just got tired of photos taking up head space so I shredded 90% of my photos and all negatives plus the cd's that came with developing the pictures. 😲 I don't regret shredding most of it. Now I have a very small container of SD cards of pics, it's never ending lol Calgon take me away! Hello from Alberta Canada 💛

I hate throwing out pics but love taking a bunch of my family. So I started making collage books of them. I take all the pics from the year and print them out in different sizes, and make pages for the album that are completely covered in pictures. It's a mix of scrapbooking, crafting, puzzles and photos which makes it fun for me to assemble. My family loves looking thru them and it seems like you find a new picture everytime you go thru them.

I’m currently in the “ everything shoved in bins in a closet/under the bed” stage Pictures are the one area I haven’t had the mindset to deal with, but I can now thanks to you! I was so stressed with the idea of having to scan everything in and/or put everything in chronological order that I didn’t want to tackle it I love looking through photos and have fond memories of doing so with my grandparents... thank you for motivating me to start!

I sorted pics into events and holidays and then went through each pile. Example: Christmases. I did each year looking for duplicates and I got rid of dups and then bad or very similar pics. I did this for all holidays and then events like birthdays, camping and the like. It worked great cuz I first separated and then put each event in a big envelope and labeled it. Then I was able to sort them one event at a time without any mess. So much easier.

Dealing with all the photos, including slides, that my parents have is my main goal for this year and it is crazy overwhelming. I really need to remember that not all are worth keeping and archiving. Thanks.

Some time back I started looking through all my loose pictures and dividing them between my three older kids so they would have some pictures of them with family. Then I put them in albums for them to have. (It was because I was not getting any younger and they needed to go...) On my oldest daughter 40th Birthday 🎂 I had hers fixed and gave it to her ... she was so excited! I then brought out the two boys albums for them! So they they all looked at each other’s and laughed ... remember this or this ... it was just a blessing to hear and see. (I was witnessing how it would have be if I had passed and they where looking at single pictures and deciding which one got what picture!) I still have their 8x10 pictures in an album with me. Just could not let them go! I sit down and go through them every now and then!🌹

Thank you so much! Very timely! I appreciated too that the albums don't need to be perfect. We can all be hard on ourselves, can't we?! I've wrestled with how to begin - I literally do not have one album created, but LOTS of boxes of photos. I've recently decided on a way to do it, and wondered if others have done it this way, or may like the idea. I am going to buy acid/lignin free oaktag and acid free protective sleeves for a 3 ring binder, put photos on the paper and insert two pages back-to-back into the protective sleeve, then put them into the 3 ring binder in chronological order. When I find random photos, since its a 3 ring binder, I can insert a page where it belongs. And, I can write on the oaktag. I think this will be the least expensive route for me to go knowing I have so many to do. I searched for bigger protective sleeves and albums - besides 8.5 x 11" but the price was so much more that I'm sticking to normal paper size and albums. Wondered for a long time about "how many" albums to make (as in: 1 for each child, etc?) - decided to make ONE set of albums, and then I plan to take them to a copy center to make a hard copy for each child as well as a digital copies for them and one on a flash drive to keep in a safe place. Thought I'd share in case others are at this wondering/beginning stage as well. It helped with not having to have everything perfectly in order, since I can insert later if I come across things - and can just get started.

I love those kinds of photo albums too. I have scanned 3 generations of our family photo's but that was before I had my daughter. Now the pressure is on because my daughter wants photo albums for her from since she was born which is all digital. Nine years of photo's and photography use to be my hobby. I gives anxiety when ever I think about were too start oh my ...lol....

Unfortunately, my folks had been putting off going through loads of photos for years. It wasn't until near my Father's death that we took the time to sort through them. We threw out so many that never needed to be saved in the first place! When it came time to choose photos of my father for the funeral home presentation , it became an easier task to search through it all. Additionally, it opened my eyes up to the fact that I avoided being in pictures for years. I was fat and hated how I looked. So I was either out of the shot or I was the photographer. It was surprising to me. Now still fat and in my 50's I will make a point not to avoid the camera any longer.

I think albums are definitely the way to make photos safe and accessible; my family has quite a few because I used to put everything in chronological order (this was WAY back...in my younger days). One thing I would love to mention about yours...PLEASE GET YOUR PHOTOS OUT OF THE "MAGNETIC SHEET" ALBUM IF YOU WANT TO PRESERVE THEM. Those albums are NOT acid free (can you see the bit of yellowing around the edges of the pages) and that acid will destroy your photos (they will crumble into bits!). Almost all albums use photo safe paper these days, but those old ones didn't. :)

I think an important point is to just make an appointment with yourself to keep working on it. Whether it’s 15 min. Or a day.

My husband made a collage slideshow for our Amazon Fire screen saver on our TV. My girls love seeing their pictures and other family members pop up on the screen.

I actually just had to go through my photos to make a video for my daughter's wedding and wished I had them organized already because it took so long. Since I had to get them all out, I researched ways to organize while I was dealing with them and I cannot remember where I saw this, but they have these plastic containers where you can put pictures in smaller plastic containers (clear) and it is like a suitcase, but the little individual containers fit inside the suitcase so you can separate by category, etc. I found one at Hobby Lobby. That is a good alternative instead of the boxes you cannot see through and to keep in one place, but after trying to utilize that, I am with you in thinking the albums are the way to go so we can all enjoy. I too remember going to my grandmas when I was younger and I would ask her to pull out the pictures and she loved showing me and sharing, so I know my family would love that. I am glad you said do not try to put them in an order because that is overwhelming because that is exactly why I kept putting it off - thinking of how big of a task that is....this is motivating to get it going!! Thank you!!

It never occurred to me that I could put photos in an album out of order! That tip made me stop and realize I can theme it any way I need ("kids before age 8") and just put them in! Soooo much better than having them uselessly hidden in a box!

I love your pragmatical approach to this overwhelming task. I'm slowly learning to accept that 'done is better than perfect'. Your videos help a lot! Thank you!

I’ve been scrapbooking for 15 years and it has completely changed through the years from my dating early 20’s to my married with kids life! I love it.

I made albums for each of my kids several years ago so they can see their childhood and then I inherited my grandparents albums, so I intend to go through them and create new albums of just the important pictures so I am not carrying around 10 messy albums that can’t even be opened without stuff falling out. Once again you have inspired me.

Honestly, the only photos I kept printed were the ones from my younger childhood from birth to around age 12. After that, I was in charge of taking pictures digitally and storing them on an external hard drive so there was no need for printing them out. When I was decluttering I saw that I have thousands of pictures from over the years of people that made me upset, sad, or angry. I ended up ripping up all the scrapbooks and albums that I had made in my youth and tossed many away in the bin. I am happier now that I only kept the ones that were rare and special. Now my mom... that's another story. I will be going through her loose pictures she has giant bins of them in her house. I know I am going to be the one who has to sort and place in albums and I am excited about it. :3

I have to get past that notion that it has to be organized into years or holidays or events. I've been telling myself for years that I will get to it... first the physical photos, then making photobooks from digital ones (looking forward to next week's video!). Time to finally just tackle it.

I make photo collages to hang on the wall. It serves as art while cherishing pictures.

Many years ago I spent several weeks with my grandmothers going through their photos, dividing them up, making albums of each of their kids and extra albums of extended family and friends. My grandmothers were able to identify many people and appreiated my time and efforts.

We scan our favorite photos of the year to Shutterfly and make a book. The size is perfect and take up way less space than photo albums. When sorting boxes of old photos make piles of people or places. In group photos put them in the oldest person's pile or just distribute to whoever needs more pics in their pile. Hope this is useful.

Scrapbooking is my passion so photos bring me the ultimate joy, but because of that I also take a lot of photos. I can understand how it can easily get overwhelming. One way that people can sort photos without doing so chronologically is using Stacy Julian’s Library of Memories system which basically just sorts them into four categories - Things We Do, Places We Go, People We Love & All About Us it works for photos in albums or just stored in boxes. Scrapbookers will have lots of ideas on photo management so they’re a great source of help and knowledge if anyone needs assistance with their photos and best thing is they’ll actually enjoy helping out in this area.

So I have an idea for the extra photos.... I don't know about you but with my family every time they flip thru an albumn someone will always end up saying something along the lines of wanting a copy etc...but some of those family members are not always reliable for returns or one photo turns into twenty that they want to copy... so what I do is put a few extras of the same photo behind the photo in the albumn. It is not the best way because your still keeping them (however all in ome place and not in a separate box) but it never fails that someone always mentions wanting a copy of certain photos. I also love throwing photos in with bday cards,etc so it keeps me from driven an extra trip to the walmart photo centre!

I am glad to know I am not the only person with boxes of old photos in my house 😁Good advice!

You nailed it, Dawn, when you said that one of the problems is that we'd get duplicates of our pictures and we would often take multiple pictures to make sure at least one was good. Because of those two things, I have way too many pictures!!

I love this video. We started to upload on photos to familysearch.org so we could type our memories with each photo. Then all our family could see the images and they were safe too. It is what works for us.

After bringing home all my Mothers pictures, I felt totally overwhelmed!!! So, I took ALL of my pictures, grandparents, my childhood, my family, etc., and went in my spare room. In increments of time, I separated into piles on the floor all of the photos starting with my grandparents, and coming to the present, the pictures into decades. I got picture boxes from Hobby Lobby and started with the first decade pile. I tackled one decade at a time into order and put them, labeled by decade, into the picture boxes. This took a few weeks, but I didn't pressure myself for time. It's finished now and I am happy with my solution. I hope maybe this idea can help someone with this emotional and time consuming job!! 😊❤️💕

I really like making printed Photobooks. I know it can be time consuming but they take up way less space then a regular album and you can fit so many pictures in a relatively thin book so you don’t have to sacrifice on deciding which memories to keep. It also helps keep the photos organized by year, event, vacation etc. I do this with all my Digital photos and have started the process of scanning in my printed photos and creating printed books with them as well. It does take time but it’s worth it. You can also order copies of the same book to give to kids, grandparents etc.

Thank you so much for this video! I have on my list to tackle our photos this week...to get them into something manageable and that we can look at often. I have put it off because I want the albums I create to be perfect and organized by exact date of the event. But my son brought home his binder yesterday from preschool and has not stopped talking about how much he loves to look at his photos and projects. That binder is not perfect or in order but it is his work and he just loves it. It was a great reminder that he doesn't want perfection and I dont have to try so hard to give him the perfect photo album. Thank you for the affirmation that we are enough for our families without having to be perfect. ❤

I like real photos best ! more fun flipping through an album then clicking through it

I'm so motivated. I wish I wasn't at work! My mantra is 'progress not perfection!'

Scanning photos or having a physical album is NOT an either/or concept. I love my photo albums and the scrapbooks I've made, but I've also taken the time to scan. If there's ever a fire or other event that can ruin my photos, I still have access to them because of the scans. The other bonus of having scanned the pictures is that I can create meaningful cards with the pictures for my friends and family. Everyone anticipates the personalized cards I send.

The tip on not putting your photos in chronological order is golden! When I first learned I don't have to have my photos in order, it was so freeing & so much easier to organize photos. The system I used, grouped photos into 4 categories (& I created sub-categories from there): 1. Us (our immediate family - hubby, kids & g-kids), 2. People (extended family & friends, or others), 3. Places (travel photos or where location is the main focus of the photo) & 4. Things (food, the new car, ... ). I still try to organize in order as much as possible, but no longer view it as a requirement of getting photos put into albums so we can actually enjoy looking at them & reminiscing with loved ones. Blessings!

I can't believe I did SAME THING with our photos! Just a few of every event! Not cronologicly, not perfect ones, just a few that show event and atmospfere.... Only diferent, I make digital photos to paper ones because I NEVER look trough those digital, but LOVE ph.albums! Thanks for sharing!💜

I have been making such amazing progress in decluttering my home, but those boxes...& boxes...& boxes....of pics in my storage closet are mocking me....

Good idea looking back good memories with family yes is it's true

This is my project right now (well last 3 years it has been an on/off project!) I am not brutal with photos I keep no blurred no duplicate and agree with backgrounds they tell a story. I only use albums for my children’s 1st photos, big holidays abroad then the rest are in photo boxes where they hold 6x 100 each so it helps me keep my limit to 600 a year! Still a lot but my family is extending & I don’t like just keeping them digitally…I want to touch & see them😁

A word on Culling, Storage, and Sorting - Culling - This really helps, especially when you talk about saving just a few of the special occasions. Sentimentality can get in the way of culling less-than-good photos that should be tossed. Storage - Photo albums are way too expensive for those of us with hundreds of photos. I will purchase archival sleeves that can be put in 3-ring binders. The sleeves on Amazon are fairly inexpensive. Sorting - I started sorting my photos by primary person, that way when the photos are eventually given to family members, each of my children has their own album of them and their children. As you mention, this is always a work in process, but getting photos out of boxes, and keeping them safe is the primary goal. Thank you for this! - gus (Florida)

The whole point of simplifying our house, is so we can highlight the things we enjoy and we like and we appreciate. I had to type this to remind me of the purpose. Well it is one of many reasons, but this one motivates me the most.

How funny! I'm binge watching your channel to catch up on the last few videos I haven't seen before I'm all up to speed. This video popped up as I'm going through two full photo boxes of my own from childhood! Luckily I grouped the photos into years at one point, and now I just mindlessly getting rid of doubles... but I'm ready to let go of the mediocre pictures and just keep the photos that tell the stories best, and get them into books where they can actually be enjoyed! What's even more daunting though are the boxes of my husband's family photos... Slowly but surely I'm getting more organized. I won't let another 15 years of marriage pass before we can start enjoying our memories! Thank you for all your valuable advice! It really has been so helpful and relatable!

You gave me permission 😁😊 to use a regular album. 👍 I used to scrapbook back when it was so popular. What a daunting task! I started to smashbook and that was fun. Now I just need to get the rest in an album and be done.

I probably have 20 shoeboxes full! I also have a bunch of archived photo albums. I need to work on ‘weeding out’ all the duplicates and ones I don’t want. I made a scrapbook for my daughter, after her father passed away. It was all of my pictures with her father before she was born up to 5 yrs old, she loved it.

THANK YOU for mentioning not keeping ALL photos! I throw out photos because there are tooooo many and also, as you said, not all are needed to tell a story! Knowing that someone else says this makes me feel better about tossing photos.

1) 1:42 how do you want to store your photos? 2) 3:00 simplify and pare down the photos (keep highlights, keep the ones that tell the story) The goals is to get it to a manageable amount. 3) 5:50 select you album. Remember that it doesn't happen to be perfect and doesn't have to be in chronological order. 4) 6:52 don't tackle sentimental items first.

This gave me an idea.. You can put your negatives, back up discs, usb or a digital hard drive in the safe. If your worried about the writing in the album just take photos of the pages or makes notes on the digital file. I find it easier to store everything on an external hard drive, but I also have negatives, cds, and usbs. If you don't have any of these instead of throwing the duplicates away put them in the safe.

Extra photos make fun collages

I recently went through and (1) decluttered our photos and kept the best ones. (2) i am keeping digital digital and prints in print. As far as childhood fotos we each (siblings) only have about a dozen so i will (3) digitalizing minimal childhood fotos and sharing with siblings. I did (4) buy storage tower to just dump all the cellphone/memory card/disc photos into and (5) declutter digital prints by year or roughly for those earlier ones. I do want to make some (6) photo albums of my absolute favorite pics for each year... thinking max 100 pics each for the last 10 years we've been a family. And i recently moved all thr photos and digital everything to a dresser drawer that's like a foot away from our front door incase of an emergency or fire that is the only thing i would want. And would be able to retrieve easily.

Writing on the back of the photo is still lovely, if the photo gets moved from the album. My grandma took thousands of photos and always labeled and put the year on each. I love looking at those, sometimes more than the front of the picture! I ended up scanning most of my pics, but I kept a ton of those.

I am a person who is scanning every photo so here is some information on my process. It is taking me a while because I have a young son and I only work on "the photo project" before he wakes up in the morning or after he goes to bed; not every day; sometimes with huge breaks of time in between. So its a side thing I'm doing. 1. I bought a photo scanner. I got the Epson FF-680W. I also have a flatbed scanner on my printer. Sometimes the photo just can't go through the photo scanner so I use the flatbed scanner. 2. I spent time decluttering the paper photos before I started scanning. This I could do with a box in front of the TV, as opposed to at a computer, so I could multitask. My mom got copies of EVERYTHING. And that includes blurry photos, photos with thumbs blocking the subject of the photo, similar poses, etc. 3. I spent some time getting rid of bad photos before scanning (too blurry to use) but a lot of times I have just scanned everything and made cuts after it was scanned. Sometimes I keep scanned copies and get rid of the paper copies. Sometimes I don't keep the photo at all. Some examples: I keep digital copies of all of my cousins but I shredded the physical copies of the photos. I kept similar poses but shredded all but one "best pose" copy of the paper photo. 4. It has been very important to me to reconstruct some sort of photo timeline. If you don't know who is in it, why they're in it, and when the photo was taken, I don't see much point in it. I'm getting as close to a date as I can. Sometimes my date is just "winter 1988" but sometimes it is "Christmas 1988" depending on what I'm able to figure out. I use the photo's print date (stamped or printed on the back of the photo); I use clues like who was in the photo (one of my grandpas died in 1990 so those photos can't be later); I even reconstructed Christmas photos based on what toys we got. To me, this is important to figure out. 5. I am storing photos on an external hard drive. I need to have more than one copy of this, its important to have backups for your backups when something is important, time consuming, and not able to be repeated (I shredded photos already). 6. I am going to make printed photo books to make albums out of the photos. My mom had the photos in boxes in her closet. Some were in photo albums but those albums hadn't been updated in many years. I am going to get photo albums printed. I use Shutterfly but there are other companies like Mixbook. Making a photo book is a whole other process but that's for another discussion. I bug my parents with questions but they never seem to know any information about anything I'm asking about. I know the photos are from 40 years ago but if no one is willing to figure it out, we should just shred them all. Ultimately I'm scanning my family photos and my husband's family photos so that our son will have more than a stack of photos of strangers. This is a project that first expanded before now its shrinking. I've needed to take up space (and time) to sort, scan, and store what I'm keeping. I bought a few photo storage containers (you can get at a craft store, online, or find at a discount store like Marshall's, TJ Maxx, etc.). These help me store the photos after I've sorted and scanned. I'm writing information on the back of each photo because what's the point in researching it but not adding the information to the paper copy? Eventually I'll shred more photos but I'm trying to make cuts in stages. A final mention: I finally got rid of things like my school yearbooks (I graduated in 2001 and I had 6th-12th grade years books; somewhere in my parents' house are my elementary school yearbooks still). I ripped those yearbooks apart, scanned any pages that I was on or that my brother was on. And then I shredded or recycled the yearbooks. They were heavy, took up a lot of space, and I've been storing and/or moving them around for the last 23 years. I am proud of myself for getting rid of them because I truly didn't need them but I just hadn't gotten around to figure it out.

Thank you. Yes, we have photos here that need attention. For our daughter’s 50th Birthday I put together an album of photos from her baby days until now. She loved it. She said, “Thank you for my gifts, especially the photo album.”

I have do many photos, so overwhelming. they are in boxes they are in the containers that they came in from the store so so many all over the place. A few are in albums but way too many still in the bags when I pick them up from the store. I have been putting this off for years! Still working on clearing the clutter and getting rid of things, but I am going to take care of these photos as soon as I pair down. Thank you for this video. I did get into scrapbooking, a ways back when my son was little. That became overwhelming to, because you wanted to make the perfect page and I had so many pictures that I wanted all of them there. It was just crazy, so now I have some books that are scrapbooking some half-done just crazy. I just need something simple get the pictures in label be done. Thanks again have a great day.

Thanks for your ideas!

We love looking at photo albums! Need to get my photos organized into albums too!

Thanks for all your videos, you rock!

After a year of cleaning out the basement, I have just now started to tackle the kids’ (ages 20 and 25) school memories, art, and photos. I just kept putting them all in the one location for the past year whenever I was minimizing other areas. Now I have put together a simple scrapbook (with the old magnetic page photo albums) with the school memories. I also took pictures of my daughter’s fabulous art and am making a simple photo book through Snapfish. Thanks for the advice and helping me see that I only need 1 or 2 good photos for the best memories!

Thanks for the tips ....I like your approach!

Just a little trivia learned from the Santa Rosa/Tubbs fire two years ago ~ I can't tell you how many empty, ash-covered lots we saw (5000 homes and structures burnt)...and how many melted safes were left on the levelled properties. Even huge, metal safes - the temperatures from 1100 - 1500 degrees - Nothing is guaranteed in a safe. I'll look forward to seeing your next video.

Oh my goodness 😌 thank you so much for the tips. So needed this. A big load off my shoulders. 😊

It took days but I went through all of our photos. I purged and focussed on people rather than places. Now the books are in order and fun to flip through. Thanks for sharing your method.

My photos that are in albums I only scan them as needed and then I’ll keep them in my digital file. I’m a scrapbooker so I LOVE pictures!

I love looking at my photo albums. Have lots of albums with actual photos. Lately, though with the photos put on computer from camera and backed up to the cloud. I pick out photos that are an overview of event or trip and create albums, on like Shutterfly, and then have the photo books printed.

I loved these tips. So nice to see someone who likes albums instead of digitizing. The handwritten note next to the photo idea is one I’m going to do!

I am so overwhelmed

I have a whole tub and albums upon albums of photos to go through. Thanks for the great tips!!

SO many practical ideas! She spoke straight to my heart and need for decluttering and organization at this point in my life. Thank you Dawn!

Got my album so now working thru my photos. Great tip on just keeping a couple photos of each event 👍

Your videos have helped me when minimizing the items in my home. Your phrase of "managing items" definitely keeps things in perspective for me when decluttering ❤

This video helped me get going on organizing and minimalizing my photos! I bought the albums you linked on amazon and I love them! Your grocery and meal planning videos also have changed my life! So simple to have my grocery and meal list on one piece of paper! Thank you!!!!!!

this was a great video. I have maybe 15 magnetic photo albums that need to be redone because the pictures slide out. At the time when we were developing film, I made 2 copies, 1 for my album and 1 for my kids (I have 2 so I made them each a set of albums.) My son is sentimental like I am and those albums are probably still in the box I gave him in the garage but he won't ever throw them out. My daughter probably threw them out-not sentimental at all. She has 2 children and at the end of every year, makes a photo book with the highlights of the year. The last video I watched said to buy the photo cases which hold about 1000 or more photos in boxes of 100. I was going to do that someday but I feel that my children will not ever take the time to open these boxes and look thru them so why bother. Your idea of albums with the good, meaningful pictures makes a lot of sense. I love your series and I am trying to reduce my clutter. My other half, though, doesn't believe in getting rid of ANYTHING. he has the pictures and the camera cards to make new photos should something happen to the originals (but the camera cards are stored in the kitchen). I wish I could get him somewhat on board with this. We will be downsizing someday soon and I dread the thought of packing. His idea is to put it all in storage. What a burden for his kids. (Second marriage). I got rid of a lot to move in his house, but have a long way to go to get to where you are (and I want to be). Thank you for a wonderful series. I enjoy your videos so much!

I am a scrapbooker so the amount of photos I have is insane. I have made a conscious effort to really only keep the ones with people in them, and always journal in my scrapbooks as well. For trips or special occasions with a lot of photos I do mini albums. My grandchildren love to look through them all.

Yes! I have both many many albums and boxes and boxes of loose photographs along with framed photos that came out of our parents homes. I also have negatives which are really worthless now. I tried to have a reprint made and the young girl at the photo department had no idea what a negative was! We are moving next year and need to go through all those boxes and my husband does not want to throw any photographs away!

I spent hours and hours scanning ALL our pictures (we have 6 kids) a few summers ago and it was a HUGE project but I am glad I did it. I also keep a few photo albums, like the one you mentioned that came from Walmart, where I keep favorite random pictures of the family and I can write a little snippet next to it. It’s not in any particular order but that is what makes it fun to look through!! Thanks for another great video! You’re awesome!

I should share this with my mom. I know she’s overwhelmed by photos too!

I agree. I’ve actually started making a Snapfish year album. It does take time, but we homeschool, and my kids have just really appreciated it. And it’s so much better than my yearbooks! I actually only kept one of my airbags just to show them how little is in them for anyone who was not popular! LOL So we make a yearly photo book for the kids to flip through. If I wanted lots of images scanned, It would be worth paying somebody for the service. And I am a major penny pincher!

Thank you!! You always have such practical, good advice!!! I cant wait until your next video! My digital photos are all over the place!

Thank you for your advice! I went through boxes and boxes of pictures at my moms house last year and got rid of over half. It was actually a lot of fun reminiscing and now we can actually find them. 😀

You just gave me the freedom to get rid of all of the pictures that I won't use. I don't know why I needed that permission, but I just did! Thank you!

This was so helpful! I totally agree with your thought of keeping just a few important photos! I would love to hear your thoughts on baby books and keeping things from babies first memories, etc.