Project Life - Catching up on 2011: Photographs

Sorry this is late, we are hoping to get our house on the market shortly and I have been cleaning like a maniac to get stuff done.

I scrapbook to preserve memories. Plain and simple. With those memories, I love to have photographs, so today I am going to share with you my process for sorting and organizing my photos after they have been printed.

First of all, all of my digital photos are saved on a computer, external hard drive, and off-site backed up in folders first with the year and then each week has its own folder where the pictures are located. This makes is so easy to go through the photos I have when I need to find a specific one. The best part of digital photos is that I can see the exact date/time the photo was taken, provided my camera was set up correctly.

Here is a look at the drawer that currently contains all of the photos I have printed but not organized from 2010-2012. It's absolutely not how I want my photos to be stored, however they are protected from the light.

Normally, I like to keep them organized in the small 4x6 Iris cases that are made to hold photos. I have a few of the small Iris boxes that hold the photo cases, however I wasn't sure what I was going to do with all of them, so many of my cases are loose. When I pulled the 2011 cases out of the bin that holds my sorted and dated photos, I was quite surprised and excited to see that so many already had photos in them, and a lot of photos in some.

This made my job easier. In a couple of hours, I was able to go through the envelopes from the drawer and sort the 2011 pictures out and then sort them by month.

After the pictures are sorted by month, I use the computer to help me find the dates and use a small date stamp and StazOn ink to lightly stamp the date on the back of the photo. Then I sort the photos by date in the small Iris cases and set them aside to be scrapped.

I was able to complete this entire process (sans organizing them on the computer which I do as I download them off the camera) in 2 days! :) I feel like I am ready to get moving on these albums, and over the course of the next week, I plan to work on the January pictures. Friday, I am hoping to share my January pages, inserts and 12 x 12 layouts.

This system works really well for when I am behind on Project Life, because it keeps my photos together by month and makes them easier to find. Starting at the beginning of 2013, I began printing my photos every Saturday night, after my boys go to bed (weeks run Sunday-Saturday). When I pick them up from the printer I label the envelope with the week numbers and the dates and then throw them in the Iris box for the month I am on to keep the photos with the supplies...eventually I will blog about this process, but it probably won't be until my 2011 albums are complete.

I hope you will continue to join me on this journey and your comments are appreciated. Thanks for stopping by.