Maybe it’s the whole organize-everything-because-it’s-spring thing or even a bit of last minute nesting, but lately I’ve been all about whipping things into submission. As in, finding a place for every last paperclip and utensil… even putting every single one of our photos into coordinated leather albums and chronologically numbering them. Yeah, it’s a little crazy but I’ve always been a nerd for organization. And looking at those nice little hand-numbered tags just makes me smile. It’s the little things, right?
The first stage of the project was to go through all my mismatched old falling-apart albums (and stacks of sad album-less photos) and put them all in chronological order. Then I grabbed some nice-enough-but-not-bank-breaking albums from Target and filled ’em up. I could have stopped there but I wondered if they might be hard to differentiate and sift through since they’re all so similar looking (which I like for consistency, but it’s not as easy to remember as “the moving photos are in the yellow sunflower album”).
And so the idea of numbering the albums was born…
One trip to Office Max and a few dollars later I came home with these metal-rimmed white labels. They actually were meant for labeling valet keys or something (so I removed the little key loops) but the loops would actually be handy for hanging them off of baskets in a linen closet. Gotta love a multitasking accessory like that.
Anyway, I just scribbled a number on each one using a regular old ballpoint pen and relied on a loop of scotch tape to secure them to each album (a dot of Liquid Nails would probably hold them in place even more securely). What do you think? Does it make you want to slap me? Or does it make you want to organize something? I’m one of those people who watches other people clean their house on TV and immediately wants to clean mine. Here’s hoping my obsessive organizing rubs off on a few enthusiastic storage freaks like me!
And since many people write to us to ask how we organize and store our photos on the computer along with our hard copies, here’s more info in that regard. We keep a folder for each month on the computer (since all of our pics are digital) and we dump them into the right month as we take them. Then every few months we go thought a few months at a time and pick the ones we love and get them printed at CVS on the cheap and stick them (chronologically) in our newly-matched-and-numbered albums. Then we toss the rest into the computer trash and hit “empty.” We definitely like editing down our photos (instead of printing every single one that we take). And burning the remaining photos that we thought were good enough to print at the end of the year on a CD labeled as “Photos 2009” gives us a nice little photo backup system that’s easy to maintain (we’re left with one small CD of annual pics to store in our fireproof safe, while the identical CVS prints are displayed in our numbered albums).
So that’s what works for us. And speaking of organization, what have you guys corralled or chronologically arranged lately? Any junk-drawer-clean-outs going on? What about paring down clothes or donating all those unused cans of food in the backs of your kitchen cabinets? Do tell. You know we live vicariously through you guys, right?
Psst- Wanna see other “Easy Upgrades” we’ve implemented? Here’s one and here’s another.
Brittany says
I LOVE these organizing posts :) I think it must be spring cleaning time, or the fact that now our wedding is over with I have much less to do with my “free time”, but I have been on an organizing craze in our house too! I just recently organized our spice cabinet and pantry…complete with DIY labels I made! Check it out on this blog post I wrote.
http://justanotherdayinparadise1.blogspot.com/2010/05/organize-kitchen-completed.html
The best part is how awesome it feels to have it all in a sensible order and you can navigate through the kitchen easily! I am also going to hang up cork board on the inside of the pantry doors as one of your posts suggested! Thanks for this post on photos–I need this with all the wedding pictures we just got :) Keep up the great posts and congrats on your soon to come little one!!
Bridget says
We just inherited about 45 photo albums from my grandmother, and we’re trying to figure out how best to distribute/copy/all that…and the best answer seems simply to scan one by one…even if that takes forever! Any ideas?
YoungHouseLove says
Yeah, that’s unfortunately all we can come up with. Although there might be a service that can do it for you (being DIYers we would do it ourselves to save the money though).
xo,
s
Cate says
One word: nesting! ;-)
Bruce says
I love your photo albums! Don’t worry, Sherry, I’m just as “crazy” as I recently organized my photos in chronological order and bought matching photo albums b/c I thought the random assortment we had was an eye sore! I have been searching online for how to label them (I was thinking engraved plates but those are $) and I’m totally going to steal your fab idea! Thanks!
J says
sorry, i know this is not a recent post but i’m just reading it now and since i’m in the process of organizing photos into albums, i figure i ask you a question. i find that i have a lot of photos that are not 4 x6 therefore don’t fit in the albums. did you have this issue and if so, what did you do? i figure i can scan them to a smaller size but just wanted to hear what you guys did, if in fact you had photos of a larger size. thx!
YoungHouseLove says
Luckily all of our photos for the albums were 4×6 and the few older ones that weren’t were either trimmed down or slipped into a large white envelope which we taped to the back cover of the book (so they weren’t separated from other photos from the same time period). Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Janet says
great! thanks and kisses to the beanie!!
Cheryl says
Me too…scrolling thru old posts and this one (well, actually most of them) caught my eye! I am an organization freak and my photo albums/boxes must match…even the ones in the cupboard! I have all the same photo albums from target which i began buying last year. I am so obsessed that i bought extras (try to get them on sale but rarely do) so that if they discontinue them I will have extras. This always happens to me…I find something I like at Target or Hallmark or Archivers and begin a project and then when I need more, the store changes them! Grrrr You can also order these albums online at target. I like them because they don’t bulge when full, they stay slim and stacked like soldiers on the shelf and are all the same height. Yes, I also have the same problem as another poster with pix of all sizes. This drives me crazy, so I like John and Sherry’s idea. I hate having an album of photos and then ‘the rest of’ the photos somewhere else…too confusing for my anal little brain. hahaha As for the poster with the 45 inherited albums…I feel your pain. I am working on a similar project for past 2 years, on and off. There are scan houses than can do batches of photos at a time but it can get pricey; the affordable ones are oversees and no way I’m going to ships these treasures out of my site. Go on line and google info about organizing massive quanities of photos and also google scanning photos locally and you should get some ideas. Also, one other suggestion: this is a pain to do but count or at least ‘eyeball’ how many photos of each size you have and if possible, try and buy all your storage at once or you’ll run into the problem I did: as you are ‘storing’ your photos in new homes (boxes/albums) and you need more and you run to the store only to find out the style/size/color has been discontinued! Major frustration.
Google ‘archival boxes’ or ‘photo boxes’ and there are tons of storage options, tho a bit pricey. IKEA has great boxes but they are not photo safe. Good luck with project and thanks John/Sherry as always for your inspiration!
Jessica says
I love the idea of having a separate folder for each month on your computer. My husband and I weren’t big photo takers until our now-11-month-old daughter was born. Since we take pictures on both our cell phones and the digital camera, plus steal ones of her that our family members post on Facebook/email us it can be super hard to keep them in order and decide which ones to print.
Thank you for the inspiration to get up to date before her first birthday. And thank you even more for “permission” to delete some of them. I erase the obviously bad ones (blurry, out of focus, head chopped off, etc) but it’s hard not to save the so-so ones, at least on the computer.
And thanks to the previous commenters who suggested writing the person/place/date info on the back of each photo – great tips!
karisa adams says
thanks for redirecting me to this post. it was exactly what i was looking for. question for you though – did you purchase any extra albums in advance? i want to reorganize my photos into matching albums, but i’m afraid i’ll go to all the trouble just to have the albums be discontinued when i need to purchase more.
YoungHouseLove says
Absolutely! We wanted them all to have the same look for a while so we grabbed three or four extras. Luckily Target still has the same ones a few months later (so we’re hoping that trend continues if and when we run out of the extra ones). Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Jennifer says
Sherry,
I’ve been trying to find your same albums on Target’s site, with shifty luck. Rumour is that Target has changed the size & quality of the albums over the last year. Would you please tell me if one of these three is the style you bought? Or if there is any company info inside yours that I could use to scour the internet? You would be saving a married-for-a-year-and-moved-across-the-world-and-am-23w-with-child-need-to-organize-now woman from an OCD breakdown!
Classic Stitch 3up:
https://www.target.com/gp/detail.html?asin=B0011UTIB0&colid=EDA8RX1VOB1W&coliid=ILXGYDAWNQ00J&bckreg=list
Create Your Own:
https://www.target.com/gp/detail.html?asin=B0011UWD8U&colid=EDA8RX1VOB1W&coliid=I11GSYWKFU342D&bckreg=list
Home Ess Faux Leather 3up:
https://www.target.com/gp/detail.html?asin=B0040RWTOY&colid=EDA8RX1VOB1W&coliid=I3FDNSL7ZSRFHV&bckreg=list
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Jennifer,
The third link looks like ours ( https://www.target.com/gp/detail.html?asin=B0040RWTOY&colid=EDA8RX1VOB1W&coliid=I3FDNSL7ZSRFHV&bckreg=list ). Hope it helps! As for the quality being different, we have purchased them years ago and months ago and they seem the exact same to us. No complaints at all! Although we do buy them in stores as opposed to online (which might save you shipping fees). Good luck!
xo,
s
KellyD says
Since having Clara, have you been able to continue paring down the pictures you choose to keep? I have a 6 month old and I realized after reading this that if I continue at my current rate I will have 36,000 pictures by the time he turns 18!!! I would be like a photo version of a hoarder! Unacceptable on so many levels….
BUT how do you decide which adorable smiles and funny faces are okay to give up? Do you set limits on yourself, like X amount per week? per month? Do you think its easier to delete extras right away before you have time to ponder keeping them? or give it time until you are okay with letting it go? Maybe I am just too sentimental because I know this is my only child… need your advice please…
YoungHouseLove says
We take a million pics of her but in the end we go through and pick out the favorites which get saved to Flickr (automatic back-up and our friends and family can see them) and then saved to a disk which we then print out for her album. So far it works but I think we’ll have a million pics of her but that’s kind of ok since we know we’re obsessed and we’ll do the same thing for all future kiddos. Haha.
xo,
s
Krista says
OK, so I decided I was going to do this LAST May (after you posted). Got the albums around June/July 2010 and JUST finished 2007-2011. Yes, I started at weird years. Yes, I still have 21 years to cover. UGH! How did you do this?! My pictures from when I was a baby to say 8th grade are completely disorganized, unlabeled and a mess. *sighs* One day I hope to achieve your level of organization! You two are truly inspirational and I love YHL :)
YoungHouseLove says
I just did it an album or box at a time in front of the TV at night over the course of a few weeks. Maybe even a few months. I went slow and steady. You can do it! Good luck…
xo,
s
Anne says
Hey YHLers!
I have been having so much fun going through your archives! Quick question I have after reading this post about photo albums:
What do you do with old photographs of old girlfriends/boyfriends? My husband was in a relationship for ten years before we got together (his other relationships before me just lasted a few months, so no stockpiles of photos to worry about there…). However, he has thousands of photos from his old house with his ex girlfriend spanning a decade, literally! I have no problem with these pictures, but it does feel a little weird to display them in our home in any way. I don’t want to be rude to him, either… I’m just not sure what to do! This, I suppose is more of an ettiquette question than home design, but I would love to have your opinion.
Thanks for everything!
Anne
YoungHouseLove says
John and I each have about four photo albums of our life before we met, so we just keep them on a shelf in the closet (from kid-hood up to those awkward teenage years up until 2003 when we met). We only have room for a few albums to be out (our wedding album, one full of Clara and Burger pics, etc), so we figure the older photos are there if we want to page through them and laugh at our hair/outfits, but they don’t have to be on display. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Tenaj says
OMG!!! This is brilliant and totally simplifies photo organization!
I have an iPhoto library FULL of photos. I keep saying I need to organize. But it’s so overwhelming that I literally avoid it like the plague.
With the new year quickly approaching and a baby coming in May I have much to organize. Photos included.
Thank you for posting. I love your site. For some reason you just seem to be able to simplify things so easily for me.