10 Lessons I Learned from Organizing Pictures
Organizing pictures into 11 different albums is one of my goals this year. Why 11? And why such an audacious goal? My mom has been purging as they are downsizing. One of the items she entrusted me with was her vast array of photos, which for me, are like gold. Priceless. Photos from her childhood, my dad’s childhood, mine and my brothers’ childhoods, their grandkids, their mini trips, among others.
How it all started
My mom took pictures throughout our lifetime and had them developed from 35mm film (gasp!) and from disc cameras (gasp!). If you’re young enough and don’t know what either of those are, go Google it.
Now that you’ve done that, yes, we had to wait days, sometimes a week to get a roll of film developed. No, we didn’t know if someone was blinking until AFTER the pictures were developed and PAID for. Yes, we typically took more than one shot in case someone was blinking. No, selfies were not a thing yet.
I knew one of the things my mom cherished most were her photos. She had some pictures in albums, some in boxes, and others in envelopes. The one thing she did consistently was that she labeled the photo with the date and place or people. And for that, I bow down and give her thanks!
Her labeling made categorizing the photos into albums and envisioning the scrapbook groups SO.MUCH.EASIER!!!
As I worked through the pictures I tried to come up with themes or groups of pictures that would make sense in a scrapbook. With the sheer volume of pictures, I knew I wanted to use 12×12 albums to include the most amount of pictures and to honor all the time and effort she had put into documenting our lives.
Inevitably there were lessons I learned along the journey, and here are 10 of them.
1. Label your pictures!!
No, you won’t remember the name of your kindergarten teacher, or the couple you met on a vacation, or even which beach you were at. Heck, you’re lucky if you remember which of your cousins are in the picture. Simple enough, label them.
2. Get them developed regularly
If you’re like me, I don’t develop pictures every month or even multiple times a year, although I do attempt to develop them at least once a year. I’d like to pick an event like my birthday, or an anniversary, or even just daylight savings time changes to be a steady reminder that it’s time to develop. Invariably we’ve all lost
3. Label EACH of them
Did I mention that already? Just set a timer for 10 minutes every night until you get through all of them, because doing it this way you WILL get through them and you might decide to sit for longer than 10 minutes once you get into it. Tricks of the mind, eh? Take the time to label them.
4. Take Pictures
With the ease of today’s cell phones, take the picture, and then visit step #2, and then #3.
5. Make sure Mom is in the pictures
Make sure she is in some of the pictures, even if her hair is a mess and she doesn’t have makeup on. Just take the picture. How many times is she the one taking all the pictures? Whoever is usually BEHIND the camera, make sure they get in FRONT of it too.
6. Jot down context for the photo
Jot down funny phrases or interesting points about what’s going on in the picture. Do not commit to doing this for EVERY picture. For every 50 pictures, maybe only do it for 5 or less of them. Small commitments.
7. Just like the good china, use the good pictures
Don’t photocopy to preserve the original picture. Just use it. It will end up in a box that no one looks at. A few exceptions: if the picture is falling apart, or it is printed on thin paper, or it might be a picture you are not the owner of and have to return to someone else, then yes, absolutely photocopy it.
8. Decide how to organize by album
Spend some time planning how you would like to use the albums. Would you want to look at them by
9. Do the work in bite-sized chunks of time
Sometimes just 10 minutes can work wonders. If I work 10 minutes a night even 5 out of 7 nights, I’ll get more accomplished than if I just think about it every single night without doing anything. Amazing, right? 😉 Trust in the process and schedule at least 10 minutes to label pictures, categorize, or get them in albums.
10. Display the albums
Make them easy to pull out and look through. I remember as a kid we had an album for each of us kids. They sat on the bottom of a bookshelf. I remember sitting next to the bookshelf just paging through them and even though I had seen the pictures a million times it was always fun to see them again.
Put them on a coffee table, or easily accessible on a bookshelf. For graduation parties or birthdays, pull out some of the albums that would be relevant to the person being celebrated. Just be careful to keep them away from food and drinks!
Organizing my albums
As I began sorting pictures, I started to notice album possibilities based on the sheer volume of pictures within each trend. These were the trends I identified. Yours may be very different. That’s okay.
- A separate album for each of my siblings and me (3 albums). These albums pictured are from Recollections and were bought at Michael’s craft store.
- A separate album for each of our adult families (3 albums)
- A separate album for each of my parents’ childhood years (2 albums)
- An album for my parent’s adult years from their wedding through to the present. It will include a few of the kids’ shots, the family portraits, the houses they’ve lived it, and some of their mini trips and more recent accomplishments.
- An album for my dad’s sister since we had a fair amount of their photos
- An album for my mom’s botanical adventures. Over the years she has always loved flowers and gardening and I’m so glad she took pictures of them. Plants she babied from half-dead, clearance-priced racks and turned them into voluminous blooms. To say she has a green thumb would be an understatement.
My approach
My plan is to work on roughly 1 album per month. I already have the pictures sorted by the albums above. Some of the pictures I have in boxes are already in order by date
Unfortunately, I haven’t made the progress I had hoped to achieve. I’ve come to realize the idea of sitting down with a vast array of supplies to only produce 2 pages at a time (because that’s about all I can devote in a single evening) is too overwhelming. I feel I need to bring everything out, and then put it all back away since we have a cat that loves scrapbooking supplies and as a result, I do nothing. Can you say “perfectionist”?
So I did what any self-respecting, goal-oriented, project-finisher would do: I Googled it.
Piece by Piece
I’ve read about scrapbookers who will combine all the supplies for a particular page into a folder or page protector, and they do it piecemeal. By using this approach they make consistent progress.
Session #1
I’m thinking I could apply my 10 minute idea. One night they might lay out the pictures for a few pages. All they do is group the pictures by page. They don’t actually attach them. They just decide how many and which pictures will go on a page. That’s it. They might only do 5 pages at a time.
Session #2
In another session, they begin creating page packets by adding in the papers they will use for each page. Also in this packet, they might add an idea or sketch for the actual layout.
Session #3
The next night they paw through various embellishments (stickers, vellum sayings, eyelets, brads, ribbon, etc) and memorabilia and add those to each of the packets based on page theme, color, etc. You could add the supplies into a U-shaped page protector, or you could slide these smaller elements into a Ziploc bag.
You end up making steady progress and minimize the overwhelm since each of these activities can be done in a short amount of time.
Session #4
Lastly, they spend time actually putting together one page at a time since everything is already included in the packet and it’s as easy as pulling that page packet out and putting all the pieces together. Easy to pull out. Quick to assemble. Easy to put away in the album.
April’s Goal
The month of April (here’s my public accountability, yikes!) will be focused on my younger brother’s childhood album. I already have some pages started since I had used my old method of finishing several pages from start to finish in one sitting. Then I came across several more pictures in our downsizing activities that I needed to include and so I will now work those into the album. And I also need to add embellishments and notes to most of the existing pages.
My plan is to spend 10 minutes or so each day putting together the supplies for 2-page layouts and dropping in pictures, papers, embellishments, etc. Once I have several of these packets ready, I will spend an hour or so day putting the actual elements to the page and completing the album.
I’ve even thought about setting a timer for each page. I know this might be too much for some folks, but I think once I get past the first few pages, I’ll have a better idea of how long it takes, versus how long I dilly-dally. I’m thinking maybe 15 minutes per page?
Creating a legacy
My mom enjoyed scrapbooking back in the day and I’m thinking I would like to have her help me once the packets are assembled. I’ll coordinate each of the page packets. She and I will then work on transforming the packet elements into a scrapbook page. It’ll be a fun and relaxing, we-get-through-what-we-get-through session. I envision lots of laughs, lots of ‘ooh, I like what you did on that page’, and lots of good vibes. Like me, she is easily overwhelmed with all of the options of supplies and colors. This way, she is part of the process she started. And I get all the good stories that go with the pictures!
I’m hoping this approach will be efficient and productive. I plan to complete 10 pages per week. I would absolutely love to have these albums finished by April of 2020.
Memory boxes for everything else
Any pictures not used, or duplicates, or any paraphernalia that didn’t fit or wasn’t used in the album will be placed in a box (and most likely given to the individual person). For example, I had a fake flower corsage and even my graduation gown that won’t easily fit in the albums without bulging the pages. I’ll put those in a box and likely give those to, well, myself (with Mom’s permission of course!).
So what lessons have you learned working with pictures? Does anyone “old school” scrapbook anymore? I see so many people ordering online books and I would love to say I do that, buuuuuut I don’t. It’s like reading a book online, I much prefer the tangible book.
What are your tips and tricks for busting through a mountain of pictures and albums in a “short” amount of time? (I can use all the help I can get!) 😉Drop a note in the comments!
