Organizing family photos is my absolute passion. I have been doing it for years and just recently added it as a service to my clients. When you declutter your home, you really begin to realize what is the most SPECIAL thing to you and for me, it was my PHOTOS. I love to travel and reliving where I’ve been through my photos is priceless. I was always really good at keeping my photos organized. I would get my prints made and organized into albums, I went through a scrapbooking phase and even had some of my digital images made into photo books through Shutterfly.

My collection was pretty large. I’ve moved across the country twice and packing and moving my albums was not fun. They were heavy and took up quite a few boxes. There is always a risk when you move something that it could get damaged or lost and that really stressed me out. After I got settled and started having children, the number of photos seemed to grow quicker than I could keep up with, so I knew I needed a different system. I came up with a plan to get my photos sorted, scanned, and organized. I wanted them to be safe, secure, and shareable. I’ll share with you my tips on photo organizing and offer some suggestions on how to enjoy your photos when you are done.

Find Your Photos- The very first thing you need to do before you can begin to organize your printed photos is to FIND them all. Look in various locations throughout the house where they could be stored. Closets, Drawers, Albums, Boxes, Scrapbooks, Old Frames, Under the Bed, and still in envelopes. Use a large storage tote to store all of your photos while you work on the project.

Clear a Workspace - Organizing printed photos will take some time so you will need to find a space in your home where you can work on the project, where it won’t be disruptive to your daily life. Generally, a folding table works great for this- yes you could use your kitchen or dining room table but then you would need to pack up all of your photos and supplies at the end of the day. If you have the space to set up a small folding table where you could leave your items out, this would be your best bet.

Gather Supplies- You won’t need a ton of things to get started but you may want to have a few items on hand to help make the job easier.

Sticky Notes- good for writing categories, dates, and other little notes to yourself while sorting your photos
Screwdriver- a small one to help take photos out of unwanted frames
Gloves- cotton or nitrile - they will keep the oil from your hands off of the photos
Small boxes or bags- as you separate your photos, you will want to temporarily store them together
Permanent Marker or Pen to label the bags/boxes and write your notes
Trash bag- for any unwanted photos
Scissors- to trim edges of photos
Notebook- to write a plan for yourself (more on this next)

Create a Plan- Now that you have your printed photos and supplies ready, you need to come up with a plan. I would suggest that you write it down so you can refer back to it, as it may take you a while to complete this task and you want to be able to jump back into it when you have free time.

How do you want to separate your photos? - by year, by event, by person- think of what kinds of photos you have in your collection and what type of categorization makes sense
Do you want to share these photos? - if you do, you will need a way to do so- you don’t need to have that figured out in the beginning but just knowing that you want to share them will help later on
Are you planning on digitizing your photos? - I am a strong believer in digitizing your printed photo collection (especially those photos that are not from the digital camera age). I’ll speak to digitizing a little later on
How do you want to enjoy your photos? - Think about if you want to do albums, photo collages, frames, digital frames, photo books, or a combination of all of these.

Sort- Now that you have your workspace, a plan, and all of your photos- it is time to get to work. The best way to sort your photos is into small piles - using sticky notes, write down the category in which you are sorting. Start with photos that are easy to identify and put all unknown photos to the side, as you may be able to figure out where they belong later on.

For example: if your photos are all mixed up by year, you may want to start with broader categories- like Birthdays or Halloween. Sort through your stacks until you can identify one of these holidays and put the picture into that pile. Or maybe you want to sort by person- put a sticky note with their name on the table and just start making piles of their photos- they can be broken down further later on. This is just round 1 of sorting.

Once you have broad categories, you can go further for example, by year, family, or person. So, then you could have categories such as “Halloween 1983” “Halloween Smith Side of the Family” or “Halloween -Emily’s Childhood”. It’s your project and your family so you have to make categories that make the most sense to you.

While sorting you will want to remember two very important things: Not all photos are good photos AND it’s ok to get rid of photos. Too many times, we want to hang on to every single photo we have or feel guilty for throwing away photos with people in them. The point of organizing your photos is to curate a collection of the best of the best photos. You want photos that are organized, searchable, and easy to share. No one is going to want to scroll through 20 photos of the ocean to find the one good image of the whole family standing in front of it.

Your photos should fall into one of these three categories:

DEFINITELY KEEP AND SCAN- these are your most favorite, the best ones, the ones you would feel sad about if they were lost and the ones you will definitely want to scan and preserve. These photos capture precious family memories or have great stories attached to them.
KEEP BUT NOT SCAN- these photos are special but maybe not scan worthy - they could be photos of a pet, school photos, sports or dance recital photos, house pictures, the scenery from a special trip, or really anything that you’d like to have in your collection but would be ok not preserving digitally
TRASH- Photos that can be discarded are:
- Duplicates - back in the day, we always got two copies of our photos - you definitely do not need them
- Blurry or bad photos- if there is a thumb in the picture, let it go
- Scenery & food- if you have 55 images of the Eiffel Tower or the beach in Hawaii, pick the best few and discard the rest
- People you do not know- If you don’t remember them or they just weren’t special enough to keep forever, it’s ok to let them go
- Photos that bring up bad feelings- You should be working on this project to make viewing your photo collection easier and more enjoyable, if you have photos that don’t bring you joy, they should go

Scan- Now that your photos are sorted and categorized, you should have a better idea of the ones you’d like to scan. I love scanning photos; it makes me feel good that our printed photos are preserved this way. Scanning can be a tedious process and of course, you’ll need to have a scanner. A flatbed scanner is great because you can use it to scan all photo sizes along with letters, documents, and other keepsakes. If you have mostly 4x6 photos, a feeder scanner would be a good choice, they can go through a stack of photos pretty quickly. Another great option is just your smartphone. There are many scanner apps that you can use. Pick what works best for you! Create folders on your computer that match the categories you already set up. While scanning, you can add data, and notes to the photos that will help make your collection more searchable later on.

Backup- Mother nature cannot be controlled and things like water and fire can destroy a home very quickly. To keep your collection safe, you should always have at least 3 backups of your photos. Photos should be stored on a higher level of the home and in a climate-controlled space (not in the basement, garage, or attic). Here are examples of ways to back up your photos:

Scanned Photos on your Computer
Computer Files Saved onto an external hard drive or thumb drive - these can go bad and will need to be checked and updated after a few years
Printed photos stored in photo-safe boxes
Organized collection uploaded and stored to a cloud server - you can merge your scanned photos with your digital photos here and keep your entire collection together and share with others

Enjoy- Now that your photos are sorted, scanned, and backed up, it is time to enjoy them! Hopefully, as you were working on the project, you planned out how you’d like to enjoy your collection from now on. Here are a few of my favorite ways:

Photo Albums- albums are so versatile, with so many sizes and shapes and you can put whatever photos you’d like in them. They can be super organized by dates or just a mashup of your favorite vacation pics
Frames - framed photo collages are a fun way to display your favorite images
Digital- from digital photo frames to just a screensaver on your smart tv or laptop- these will keep your images front and center all day long
Photo Books- you can go online and create beautiful custom books that you can give as gifts and enjoy forever

Photo organizing doesn’t have to be scary, sure it takes some time and discipline to see the project through to the end but it’s so worth it to have your family memories safe and secure. After you get your printed photos in order, you can think about getting your digital images organized! (Another blog post on that later!)

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience, in which I earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

How to Organize Your Photo Collection- In a Few Easy Steps