How are you with organization? Unfortunately for me it is not my strong suit...at all. With a husband, 3 kids, 2 dogs, and 1 cat, it seems like our house is always in some type of disarray. Can you relate? Every once in awhile I'll get so tired of the catch all places (or they are full) that I will spend 2 or 3 days going through everything! This of course included my craft area.

For the next few Saturdays we are going to talk about strategies for organization, not our homes, not even our craft area, our computer! Organizing our photos, our digital projects, and even some house keeing right in My Digital Studio! So roll up your sleeves and lets get started!

We are going to start with photos! I'm going to share with you what I do. It is a method that works for me. And that is the key find what works for you. Use this method as a starting point and then build from there.  First lets pull all of our photos together in one place, I use  Pictures in Windows. Let's start with your email, any photos you have been meaning to download but haven't gotten around to it? Today is the day! Log into your email and download those photos! Next, Facebook, Facebook? Yep Facebook! Have you had friends or family tag you or one of your kids go ahead and get those photos. They may not be as high resolution but that is OK. Most will still make good 4x6 photos. How about your phone, how many pictures do you have stored on your phone? And if there are certain ones you want to leave on that's fine, just copy those so you have those pictures with your collection. Last your camera, how many photos are on your camera card? Let's download all of those.

Now that you have everything on one place lets start organizing files. The easiest way is to do it in steps it isn't so overwhelming. And since this may not get finished in one sitting it isn't hard to pick up where you left off.

What categories are you going to make? Go ahead and start making those folders. Right click with your mouse, slide over and click "new".

Click on new and a new folder will show up. To name your folder right click on the folder and click "rename". In the little box that comes up give your folder a specific name. When I open my Pictures file the first thing I see are my main categories. So lets start by creating some category folders. Create a folder for each year of pictures on your computer. For example, mine is 2009. 2010, and 2011. I also have a folder for each category that involves pictures. I take care of our church website, so I have a folder entitled Origins Church, I take pictures of all of my paper-craft projects and keep cop
ies of my digital pages so I have a folder marked Stampin' Up! and Finished Digital projects. What are the categories that fit you? The great thing about digital folders is that you can rename them, delete them, and combine them! Here is a screen shot of the folders on my Pictures page. My plan in the next few days or so is to burn some of my pictures on DVD's to give me more space on my computer.

Whew that is a lot of information to apply! I know you can do it though! Get your category folders made and next week we will sort pictures into those folders.