Streamline Your Photo Storage

Tell us we’re not alone: every few months we’ll get an alert that we’ve reached our storage capacity with photos on our phones. You too? Or maybe you’ve been meaning to print photos from the family vacation last year and haven’t gotten to it. Your computer might have photos scattered in random folders with no real system of organization. If you can relate to any or all of this, we hope today’s post will offer some tips and tricks to get your photo organization under control. We’ll walk you through the system that works for us. If you have tips and tricks to share or your own amazing organization system, please share in the comments below!

Start at the Source 

As you take photos on your phone, get in the habit of deleting duplicates, extras, and photos that don’t turn out. If you find you struggle to delete at the moment you take photos, put a recurring date on the calendar each week or month to evaluate photos from the previous week/month. This will ensure you start in the right place. Take this time to star your favorites and make any edits to photos. 

Organize with Folders 

Now it’s time to set up folders for your photos. Here’s an example of our folder structure we use on our computers: 

Photos

Year (2024)

01_January

02_February

03_March

Pepper Puppy

Spring Break 

Birthday Dinner 

Misc Home 

We like to start at the top with a folder for the year and then inside we include a folder for each month. Begin the folder name with the month number so the folders will line up in a nice order. Inside the month if special events happened that month, those events get their own folders too. 

Once your folder structure is in place, you have a landing place for your starred favorite photos each month. 

Back it Up

It’s really important to have a great back up system for your photos. Set up an automatic back up from your phone to a service such as the Cloud, Google Photo, etc. Some services will charge for storage. Find a system that works for you. Once you have your photos placed in folders on your computer, back up that photo folder to an external drive. This is a great practice that will bring you peace of mind. You can purchase an external hard drive inexpensively and it will easily plug into your computer and you can simply drag the folder over to save a copy on the drive. We like to back up monthly but if you take a lot of photos you might want to back up more regularly. Once you have the photos on your computer and an external hard drive, you can delete from your phone and back up service. Back up as many places as you need to feel comfortable!

Print Your Photos 

Now that you’ve organized and backed everything up, print your photos! Think about how you’d like to utilize your prints. Do you prefer framed prints on your wall? Prints you can pull from a box and sort through? A photo book you can have on your shelf to pull and share with friends? Many local stores offer photo printing. For framed pieces, check out Framebridge for custom framed pieces. You can upload photos directly to the site and they will send your framed piece to you ready to hang on your wall. If you don’t have a good local place to print photos, we love to use MPix for professional quality prints at an affordable price. For photo books and many other beautiful gifts, we love our friends at Artifact Uprising. The tools on their site make it easy to build your photo book. You can make a book for the year or focus on a special event or vacation for mini books. Make sure you take care of your photo prints. Store any extras in photo safe boxes with good organization tabs to ensure everything stays together.

We hope you’re feeling better about your photo storage! And if this is your area of expertise, spill your secrets in the comments! We want all the tips to maximize our photo organization!