Let’s walk through it.

don’t panic (seriously)

Acknowledge how overwhelming it can feel to suddenly become responsible for someone else’s lifetime of memories. And the emotions that come with it.

Give yourself permission to take your time. These photos have already waited decades to be dealt with. They can wait a little longer while you get emotionally ready to tackle the project.

step 1: get them somewhere safe

Before you do anything else, get the boxes out of danger. That means out of:

• attics (too hot)
• garages (too humid, too many bugs)
• basements (flood risk, mold risk)

Move them to an interior closet, a spare bedroom, or under a bed. Somewhere climate-controlled and boring. You’re not organizing yet. You’re just making sure nothing gets worse while you wait to start the project.

step 2: do a quick review (this part shrinks the project considerably)

This is my favorite step, because it’s where the project stops feeling impossible. You’re going to do a fast pass through the boxes and make quick decisions about whether to keep or toss. Separate documents or non-photo items into their own pile.

This is your time to toss the doubles (or triples!), blurry or terrible photos, photos without people where you don’t understand the context, etc. When I did my own family collection, over 50% of what was in the boxes wasn’t worth keeping or digitizing. Half. Gone. The project got SO much smaller, and the photos that remained actually felt meaningful because they weren’t buried under 20 blurry shots of somebody’s thumb (that someone paid to develop and therefore felt required to keep?).

Don’t overthink this pass. If you’re not sure, keep it. The point is to get the obvious trash out of the way.

step 3: sort into high-level categories

Here’s where people get stuck: they try to sort hyper-specifically by person, by year, and by event all at once, and their dining room table becomes a photo minefield they can’t clean up for weeks.

Don’t do that. At this stage, you only need high-level buckets. Something like:

• by decade (60s, 70s, 80s, 90s)
• by life stage (childhood, high school, early marriage, kids)
• by city if your family moved a lot
• by generation if you inherited multiple families’ worth (grandparents, parents, you)

These buckets exist to give some basic structure to the project and provide clear stop and start points on the next step. “I’m going to digitize the 1970s box today” is a real, concrete task. “I’m going to digitize all of grandma’s photos” is a task that feels too big to begin.

The finer sorting (by person, exact year, event, etc) is SO much easier after digitizing, because you can drag and drop and search instead of shuffling paper around.

step 4: digitize (DIY or hire it out)

Now you actually turn the piles into files. You have two real options:

DIY. You buy or borrow a scanner, set up a system, and work through the boxes at your own pace. This is the right choice if you have time and patience. It’s also cheaper up front, though it costs you hours.

Hire a professional. You ship the boxes (or hand them off), and someone else does the scanning. This is the right choice if you’re short on time or if you know yourself and know the boxes will sit in that closet for five years if you don’t hand them off.

There’s no wrong answer. This blog post walks through some considerations to help you make this decision.

step 5: organize and back up

Once your photos are digitized, they need a real home and two backup copies.

I recommend importing your digital photos into a photo service with smart search and facial recognition, like Apple Photos or Google Photos. These tools can automatically recognize things like dogs, soccer, birthdays, and other subjects, making it much easier to find specific photos later. You can also create more specific albums if you want to organize by person, event, year, or anything else.

For your two backup copies, keep it simple. External hard drives are a great option, or you can create a copy on a flash drive to give to another family member. The goal is to make sure your family’s memories don’t exist in just one place.

step 6: decide what to keep (physically)

Once your photos are safely digitized and backed up, you get to decide what happens to the original prints.

You have my permission to do whatever feels right for you. Keep the originals if they’re meaningful to you, if you love having something tangible, or if you simply don’t feel ready to let them go. Toss them if you’ve made peace with keeping the memories digitally and don’t want the physical clutter.

There’s no “right” answer here. Keep them. Toss them. Keep some and toss some. It’s your family, your memories, and your decision.

step 7: actually enjoy them

This is the whole point. Digitizing is the initial finish line… now comes the fun stuff.

Maybe that looks like:

• A photo book of the highlights from each side of the family
• A shared album with siblings and cousins
• A slideshow at the next family gathering
• A collection of favorites for the next generation

These photos have been sitting in boxes long enough. Now it’s time to actually use them, share them, and enjoy the memories they hold.

Ready to Get Those Photos Out of the Boxes?

You don’t have to tackle this project alone or figure it all out yourself.

My Scanning & Digitization Services can help you turn boxes of old photos, slides, and other family memories into organized digital files you can actually enjoy.

Prefer to DIY? My Organizing Old Photos Course walks you through the process step-by-step so you can digitize and organize your family photos yourself.

Now… go open one box!

The post what to do with boxes of family photos you inherited appeared first on Miss Freddy.

currently…

enjoying summer break. Recent highlights were a Rockies game and a Rapids game where this tiny purse fan came in really handy (it’s been SO hot here)!

playing with these skip balls at our neighborhood pool. I’ve never figured out how to skip rocks so these have been fun.

reading Sunrise on the Reaping. I re-read The Hunger Games and Catching Fire recently and it’s been fun to hear Haymitch’s story.

listening to The Shampoo Effect on audiobook.

watching the first season of The Americans. I was a big Felicity fan so it’s been fun to see Keri Russell in another role.

eating a few spoonfuls of Jeni’s ice cream after dinner every night. I received 9 pints as a birthday gift and they’ve all been seriously delicious.

taking Anti-Spike as my wellness habit for the month. I’ve had it for a long time but never used it consistently.

feeling proud of my commitment to strength training. In previous summers I’ve failed to carve out time for it while the kids are home for the summer. Still loving the CGX app.

shopping for school supplies. Both kids will be at the same (middle) school this year!

working on a new free training that’ll be available soon! The one I have right now is still solid but since it’s almost 3 years old I thought it was time for something fresh.

*This post contains affiliate links which means I will receive a small commission if you make a purchase based on my recommendation.

The post life right now [july] appeared first on Miss Freddy.

This is the moment most people decide they need to get serious about “getting organized.” If you want to actually feel like your camera roll is organized, the answer is albums.

Yes! Let’s organize your photos with albums!

Albums are the simplest, smartest way to organize your photo collection, and they’re so much better than the old folder system you grew up with. This post walks you through what an album actually is, why it beats folders every time, and a starter list of album ideas you can start building today.

what is an album, really?

An album is a grouping of photos. When photos are added to an album, the photos themselves don’t leave your library. They don’t get duplicated. They don’t get pulled out of your timeline. They just get tagged into a group you can open anytime.

Think of it like a playlist for your photos. The song still lives in your music library, but you can also drop it into your “road trip” playlist and your “workout” playlist at the same time. One photo, many homes.

Understanding what albums are meant to do changes everything about how you find and enjoy your photos.

Once you organize your photos with albums you’ll feel like you’re in control of your camera roll.

why albums are better than folders

Folders made sense in 2003. You had a desktop computer, a digital camera, and a USB cord. You’d dump the photos into a folder called “summer vacation” and call it a day.

But folders have a problem: a photo can only live in one of them. If you put your daughter’s birthday party in the “birthdays” folder, it’s not in the “2024” folder. If you put it in “2024,” it’s not in “kid photos.”

Albums fix this in a few important ways:

1. One photo can live in multiple albums at the same time.
2. The original photo stays in your main library, sorted by date automatically.
3. You can use smart search to quickly pull photos into albums based on what’s actually in them (people, places, things).
4. Albums sync across your devices, so the work you do on your laptop shows up on your phone.
5. You’re not transferring photos off your device, renaming or dragging things around in folders like it’s a part-time job.

Folders mean you have to manually handle and sort every single photo you take (no wonder you feel chronically behind on your photos!). Albums let your photo app do the heavy lifting, while you just pick the moments worth pulling together.

how to organize your photos with albums

Before you make albums, do yourself the biggest favor: gather all your photos in one place. This is the part people skip, and it’s the reason their photo library never feels organized.

If half your photos are still on an old laptop, a thumb drive, your husband’s phone, or a dusty external hard drive, no album system in the world will save you. Get everything into one cloud library first. Then start building albums there.

Once your library is gathered, make a short list of albums you’d like to create. Fix or six, not fifty.
Need some ideas? You’ll find a starter pack later in this post!

Think of how you can use the search features to build this album faster. Let’s say you’re going to start by making a Halloween album. You could search by words like “Halloween” or “October 31” or “costume” or “pumpkin” or “mask” or “candy.” Review the search results, select the great photos in that mix, choose Add to Album.

That’s right… you DO NOT have to review every single photo in your library to make an incredibly useful album! Let the Photos App do the heavy lifting!

1. Pick a small handful of albums to start. Five or six, not fifty.
2. Use the search and people features built into your photo app to pull photos in fast.
3. Add to your albums as you go, not in one giant weekend marathon.
4. Let go of the idea that every photo needs to be in an album. Most don’t.

Done is better than perfect here. A few albums you actually use beats a perfect, elaborate album system that exists only in your head. Unlike folders, albums are flexible and can change as your life changes (pick up a new hobby? add a new album for it!).

album ideas starter pack

Ready to organize your photos with albums? Yay! So… which albums are actually worth making? Albums will be highly personal to your life. Your kids, your hobbies, your interests, your projects. But here’s a starter list with albums I’ve found really useful in my own library. Hopefully it sparks some ideas to get you started.

• best of [kid name].
  Make one of these for each kid (don’t forget the pets!). Not every photo of them. The best ones. The ones you’d want in a yearbook, on a wall, or in a slideshow at their graduation.
  
• best of us / family favorites.
  A running album of the photos that capture your family at its happiest. Holidays, ordinary mornings, the goofy ones.
  
• home projects.
  The before-during-and after photos from projects, the kids smiling in front of open bathroom walls during a remodel.
  
• school memories.
  First-day-of-school photos, art projects, awards, field trips, school plays. One album per kid works great for me but some people divide into albums by school year).
  
• travel.
  One album per trip is the way I prefer to do it. These are the simplest ones to make- you just select the first date of the trip through the final day of the trip and ‘add to album.’ Then I recommend narrowing that album down to just the best/favorites. Makes creating photo books much easier when you’ve done this work!
  
• holidays.
  I shared the Halloween example above… that was the first album I personally made! But you can also make albums for traditions your family has like birthday morning pancakes, sitting on Santas lap over the years, christmas pajamas in front of the tree, the annual gingerbread house competition, etc.

common misconceptions about albums

Albums should be chronological (year, month, etc). Nope. Your photo app already does this automatically. Every photo is tagged with the exact date and time it was taken, and your library is already sorted that way. Building “All 2023” and “January 2024” albums is just recreating work your phone already did for you. That’s precious organizing time you’ll never get back.

Every photo needs to live in an album. This is the old folder mentality talking. With folders, a photo had to live somewhere or it felt lost. Albums don’t work that way. Your main library is the home for every photo. Albums are just the highlight reels you earmark on purpose.

Albums are just like folders. Folders move a file to one location. Albums are smart tags, so the same photo can live in your “Grandma” album, your “Christmas 2023” album, and your “For Printing” album all at once, without creating any duplicates. That’s the whole magic.

ready to organize your photos with albums and build a system that actually works?

Albums work best when your whole photo library is in one place. If your photos are still scattered across phones, laptops, and old hard drives, your album system will never feel complete (and you won’t really feel organized!).

That’s exactly what Backup Bootcamp is for. It’s my step-by-step course that walks you through gathering every digital photo you own and getting them safely into one cloud library, so you can finally build the album system you’ve been wanting. Get started here.

The post how to organize your photos with albums appeared first on Miss Freddy.

currently…

recovering from my sister’s bachelorette party in Steamboat Springs. We had so much fun!

shopping for earrings after getting three new piercings for my birthday.

using these jumbo backpacks for the kids’ summer camp. Love them!

getting lots of compliments on this fun swimsuit.

re-reading Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid to prep for my neighborhood book club.

listening to Serial’s The Last 12 Weeks podcast series.

watching The Stand mini series on Paramount + (felt appropriate after I finished reading the book).

baking chocolate chip cookies with this jumbo scoop … it’s 3tbsp and makes a great oversized cookie.

trying sleep Activations as my wellness habit for the month. I’m wearing sleep headphones but find them disruptive so I don’t love this one.

doing the minimum on the work front (answering bootcamp questions daily and emails periodically) during my summer break.

*This post contains affiliate links which means I will receive a small commission if you make a purchase based on my recommendation.

The post life right now [june] appeared first on Miss Freddy.

Below are five photo wins you can knock out in under 10 mins each. They are not the whole project. They are the first dominoes. Pick one. Do it today. Come back for the next one when you are ready.

why small easy photo wins matter

Most people get stuck because they try to organize everything at once. They open the photos app, see 47,000 images, and close it again. It feels too big.

Small wins work because they have a clear start and a clear finish. You can see the progress. You feel a little lighter. And that feeling is the fuel for the next win.

You are not years behind because you are lazy. You are years behind because nobody handed you a system that fits a real life with real kids and real commitments and real laundry.

win #1: pick one cloud service and commit

Before you organize a single photo, decide where your photo library is going to live. Keep it simple: choose the cloud service that already fits your devices… and that you’re most likely already paying for.

For iPhone + Mac users, I recommend iCloud Photos.

For Android users, or iPhone users with a PC, I recommend Google Photos.

It may sound silly but say it out loud or write it down: “I use iCloud to manage my photos.” That clarity helps you feel in charge, instead of feeling like your phone is calling the shots.

Once you’ve chosen your cloud service, take two minutes to make sure it’s actually doing its job. Open your phone and check that syncing is turned on and fully up to date. Not paused. Not stuck because your storage is full. If you are out of storage, read this post.

This may not feel exciting, but it is one of the biggest wins on the list.

win #2: figure out what’s missing

Your photos are easiest to manage when they are ALL in one place, not scattered into partial libraries in various places. Many people have photos scattered across iCloud, Google Photos, Dropbox, an old external drive, and a laptop they never open anymore. That scatter makes it difficult to use and enjoy your photos.

Now that you’ve chosen your cloud service, it’s time to determine what’s missing there.

Grab a post it note or make a digital list on your phone and write the places you have ‘old’ photos saved that you need to transfer to your chosen cloud service.

Don’t try to gather everything today. Once you have a list of what’s missing, you can bring them into your cloud library one at a time.

(Need help with the technical aspects of transferring? My Backup Bootcamp course has step-by-step tutorials for all of it!)

win #3: heart favorites for 10 mins

Favoriting beats deleting every time. Instead of hunting for junk to throw away, spend 10 minutes tapping the heart on photos you love. That heart distinguishes the ‘best’ from the rest. It’s ok to have a really large photo library, but make sure the best items are noted in some way… to make them easier to find and use!

Scroll through the last few months. When a photo makes you smile, tap the heart (or star in Google Photos). That is it. No agonizing, no comparing, no deciding what to keep or cut.

Both iPhone and Android automatically build a Favorites album from every photo you heart/star. So the work you do in 10 minutes today becomes a real, usable album the second you finish.

This is the album you will pull from when you need a photo for a holiday card, a birthday slideshow, or link to a digital frame. Future-you will be so glad past-you tapped those hearts.

win #4: improve facial recognition

The automatic facial recognition is a game changer. Apple Photos and Google Photos have facial recognition built in and you can spend a few minutes making it work even better.

Go to the People section, and spend 10 minutes naming your favorite people. Merge any duplicates the app shows you (just assign the same name to both faces and it understands).

To make facial recognition even better, you can use any remaining time you have to correct a few incorrect faces. Within the info of a photo you can make corrections if it’s misidentified someone. The more corrections you make, the smarter it gets.

Once that is done, you can search your entire library by a name and pull up every photo (or video!) of them in seconds.

win #5: create album placeholders

Set up the albums first, then let the photos find their way in over time. You need a place to put your most needed/favorite photos… albums are perfect for this.

You are not sorting every single photo you have ever taken (who has time for that?!), you’re just making a dedicated space for the most important.

Think of albums (or projects) you’d find useful in your library. Your most favorite photos of the dog. All the screenshots you took related to gardening. A photo book you want to make of last year. The photos you want to include in the baby book you never made for your now 12 year old. All the first/last day of school photos you’ve taken over the years.

Make an empty album for three of them. Name them clearly.

Then, a future win can be spending 10 mins using the search feature to find relevant photos and adding the best to the album (ex: search “dog, favorites” to create that ‘favorite photos of the dog’ album in a quick minute!)

what to do after a small win

Celebrate your progress, then pick the next one. You do not have to do all five this week. You do not have to do them in order.

The people who actually get caught up on their photos are not the ones who carve out a free month. They are the ones who string together small wins, one at a time, until the library feels manageable again.

Your photos do not need a color-coded Pinterest system. They just need to be safe, findable, and usable.

frequently asked questions

How long does it really take to catch up on years of photos?

As I say frequently… your photo collection is your ‘lifetime’s work’. It’s constantly changing as your life changes- adding a new vacation, grandchild, hobby, etc. It’s not a finish line and viewing it that way is usually what keeps people stuck.

Should I cleanup my camera roll before backing them up?

No. Imagine tomorrow your camera roll is blank… and all you can say is ‘I just lost EVERYTHING because I didn’t want a few junk photos get backed up.” That makes no sense, right? Backup is always step one.

What if my photos are spread across multiple devices and drives?

Like I said in Win #2, that is normal and fixable. Start by picking one cloud system as your home base, then gather one source at a time. Old laptop this month, external drive next month. My Backup Bootcamp course has step-by-step tutorials for all of it!

Is it worth paying for cloud storage?

Yes, for most families. A larger storage plan runs about ten dollars a month and keeps your entire photo library safe, searchable, and accessible from any device. It is one of the highest-value subscriptions a memory-keeper can have.

ready for a real plan, not just a quick win?

If these small wins helped, but you know your photos need a bigger reset, the Backup Bootcamp course walks you through it step by step. You will pick the best cloud system for you, gather your photos from every device, and get everything safely in one place, with clear tutorials for both Mac and PC users.

The post 5 easy photo wins when you’re years behind on photos appeared first on Miss Freddy.