Organizing Digital Pictures {without filling up your hard drive}

I take a lot of pictures. Of everything. Pictures of sunrises, pictures of my friends, pictures of my husband, and I won't even tell you how many pictures I have of my nieces {mainly because I don't think I can count that high}. I love taking pictures. What I don't love is how easily pictures can become unorganized.

Back in the day {yea, I just said it}, I used to print almost every picture and put them into a photo album or make a "cute" scrapbook {cute being used lightly here}. That took a lot of work, though, and with digital cameras I just became unmotivated to print every picture when I could just as easily look at them on my computer.

Pros to digital photos: I don't have to worry about scrapbooking or what to do with stacks of printed photos.

Cons to digital photos: My computer was full. Literally full. At capacity, has maxed out. No More Space.

{I saw this message about 30 times before I finally decided to get serious about my storage space}

Note: The startup disk is the hard drive your computer boots to. Since I wasn't about to stop taking pictures, I needed to come up with a simple system that wouldn't take much for me to maintain, but also wouldn't completely overwhelm my hard drive. 

Here is my 3 Step Process:

Step 1: Purge
When I say I take a lot of pictures, I don't mean that I take a lot of good pictures. Most of the time for every good picture I take, there is at least one that comes out blurry, blinking, or as a close up of my finger. I try to delete these right away, but if I don't have time or have missed some, I make sure to delete them before I waste space storing them on my computer.

I will delete the "bad" pictures from my camera before uploading, and I'll quickly run through to catch any that I've missed after uploading. Sometimes it's hard to see on that tiny screen.

Step 2: Upload

I upload photos on to my computer at least monthly. If there's been a big event where I've taken 100+ pictures, I'll upload after that as well. However, each month, I try to remember to upload from both my camera AND my phone. 

My computer

I keep some photos on my computer but only those from the past year. So currently, I have pictures from August of 2013 until now. I only keep pictures up to a year on my computer to save space on my hard drive. If I start moving into 15 and 18 months or more, my hard drive gets all clogged up and my computer will start running slower {who knew organizing your photos could help your computer run faster}.

When I upload photos, I make sure I put them all into a specific folder. Now the way I organize my folders is weird, but it's what works for me. I'll organize them into holidays, events {birthdays, weddings, parties, etc.}, and weekend trips or vacations. For the other photos that remain, I have a "Random" folder. Yes, it's actually titled Random. This is kind of a catchall for all of those pictures that are randomly taken and don't really fit into a category. I know it's weird but somehow it works for me. I'm a strong believer in organizing in ways that work for you.

{I upload my photos into iPhoto, which I am actually not a huge fan of but I haven't taken the initiative to break up with it completely yet}. 

Writing this now, I'm realizing there is really no point at all to keeping photos on my computer for a year, I could just jump straight to this next upload part. You live and you learn, folks. 

Flickr 

You may have wondered where all of my pictures are if I only keep one year on my computer. I use Flickr as my mass storage for photos. This is where I store ALL of my photos. I use Flickr because as of right now it does not appear that I will ever be able to fill the space they've allotted my account {in due time Flickr, in due time}, but also they are one of the only sites that does not alter or reduce the size of your image in anyway when it's uploaded. This means it will have the same quality on Flickr as it does on my computer. If you've ever used another online program and noticed blurriness or the image was not as clear, it's because they lack this feature. Who knew? {thank you to Mr. Brit and some serious research}

When I upload to Flickr, I upload one folder at a time from my computer and make sure to create a matching folder for the item in Flickr {for example, Thanksgiving 2013 would move into Thanksgiving 2013 into Flickr.}

Flickr can appear to be a social site when you first go to it, however there are ways to keep your pictures to yourself. Just select "Only you" and "Hidden" under Privacy when you're uploading. 

{please disregard any goofy faces from Brit}

I am in no way a Flickr Buff, so if you have any more information or better advice for how to use it, please share!

Step 3: Create and share

Although I've fallen out of the hobby of creating scrapbooks, I still really like to have some kind of tangible item to flip through. Instead of a scrapbook, I make photo books using Snapfish. There are tons of other photo book websites out there, I just prefer Snapfish because I'm used to it. Also, I can upload straight from my flickr account!

Every year I create a photo book of the events, holidays, and randomness that has occurred that year. I don't select every single picture for my albums, just enough to capture a few of the memories. Some may ask why I don't just delete the ones I don't use for the album forever. I'm a sentimental hoarder, that's why. But also, now that I use Flickr to store all of my photos, I have no reason to delete the photos. I have the space and therefore I can continue my sentimental hoard. 

Sometimes we may have an experience or take a trip in a year where I took so many pictures it would be ridiculous to try to narrow them down to 5-10 for our annual album {our London/Paris trip for example, when I took 500 pictures in one day}. In those situations I just create a specific album for that trip. 

I still print photos every now and then to put in frames around the apartment. When it comes time to rotate those photos out, I simply place them in an envelop in the back of the album. This way they're not forgotten and they're organized with others from that time period.

The other great aspect of using Flickr and Snapfish, they both have very easy, and free, apps for your phone!

 {Yes, I have one follower on Flickr. No clue who it is, but I'm sure they're thrilled with my lack of public photos}

Also, as you may be able to see above, Snapfish allows you to access photos from your phone, Instagram, Facebook, and Flickr. So basically I have ALL of my pictures right here at my fingertips. Pretty sweet stuff.  

This was quite the long winded post. My deepest apologies, and thank you SO much for actually continuing to read this far! 

How do you keep photos from overwhelming your home and computer? 

Thanks for visiting!