Organization: Photos

Heres how I organize my photos. I have found this method to work best for how I scrap. I scrap mostly by person. Each of my kids has a book for every year they are old. I also have specific vacation albums, sports albums, school albums and heritage albums. I DO NOT have "family" albums.

Step One: I have ALL my photos developed at a local photo shop here in town. I have found their quality the best for me.

Step Two: I sort the pictures by topic/subject
Here I have the photos sorted by Our Ice Skating trip, Amelias 5th Birthday celebration, Amelia and Olivia Dancing and Amelia and Emily cuddling on the couch.

Step Three: I then sort each topic/subject by the person in the photo.
Here I have sorted our Ice Skating pictures into three piles; one for Olivia, one for Amelia and one for Emily. Step Four: Once I have them sorted by person I do a rough draft of my journaling on a post-it note and stick it to the pictures.

Step five: I label a tabbed index card with the month and year and the subject of the pictures. I Use a small post-it note so I can reuse the index card.

Step Six: I put all the pictures in chronological order by month and year into Cropper Hopper Photo cases.

Step Seven: I have a large Cropper Hopper Photo Storage case for each child. All there pictures are stored here.

INDEX PRINTS: I used to keep these just tossed in a box, but found it was just a big mess. Now I have them in albums with photo sleeves.

I slip the index prints in the photo sleeve in chronological order.

I purchased these albums at Micheals.

With my photo CD's I store them in plastic sleeves (purchased at Staples) I keep them in chronological order in a CD box.

With some photos, such as a specific vacation, I sort the pictures directly into the page protectors of the album I'll be using. Above and below is the album for our 2007 camping trip. I divide the pictures into subject, then drop them into the page protectors in the order I want them. This helps me to determine exactly how many pages I need in the album.

Here is a theme album in-progress. Completed pages go right back in the same page protector as I had the photos slipped into.

For photos I don't scrap, but still want to keep, I have photo boxes sorted by person. I also give extra pictures to my girls for them to do their own scrapbooking.