Ok, people. I have a problem, and I need help. I need to come clean and admit that I have an addiction to....
PHOTOS!
I love, love, love taking photos. Photos are the history book of our family. They are keys to my memory when my own mental pictures are lost under 6 years of sleep deprivation. They remind me of the good times, a literal highlight reel of our life. I want to preserve that in the best way possible.
But I'm literally drowning in photos. There are upwards of 30,000 pictures on my computer. I've spent a lot of time in the past trying to organize them into files by month and year, and while I love this set up, iPhoto doesn't. Every time I upgrade my software, it messes up my organization system and I have to redo at least part of it. So frustrating.
Anyhow, I need to get on top of this once and for all. It's only going to get worse!
I know that ultimately, I have a couple of goals:
1. Clean out and delete unwanted, blurry, or duplicate photos.
I have done this for most of the recent years, but I know I have many years that I kept every. single. photo. It's time to get brutal. I'm just going to have to commit some time to doing this. Some people might be able to do this for 15 minutes a day until it's completed. I think I'd do better just committing solid chunks of time to do it. I'm sure when it's all said and done, I will still have thousands of photos, but at least they will be all photos I want. And I think I better invest in a mouse for my laptop, lest I end up with carpal tunnel after all this.
2. Find an organization system that will be able to continue even with system upgrades.
After years of trial and error, I know that I like to have my photos organized by month and year. It's the easiest for me to find things and seems like they are then in manageable chunks. Ideal would be to find a program that would automatically do this for me. A girl can dream, right? Is there anything like this out there? Otherwise, I'll just continue to do it manually and try to be better about uploading and organizing photos on a more regular basis.
3. Make photo books for the past 15 (GULP!) years and actually print those photos out.
The scariest part of this whole process is actually making photo books. Again, my perfectionism gets in the way here. Instead of doing SOMETHING, I will procrastinate and avoid because I know I won't have time to do it the amazing way I want to. Tough. I just have to do it. Something is better than nothing. My linear mind will want to start with the pictures that are the oldest, but I think I should buck that thought and do the most recent first. If I can stay on top of recent ones and then just go back and do old ones mixed in there sometimes, I might just be able to pull this off.
Wish me luck! And if you have any ideas, words of wisdom, or have found something that worked for you, please don't hesitate to share.
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