Photo Organization

If you’re like me and love to take photos to capture just about every moment on film you are probably in need of a system of organization to keep your photos from taking over your life. I bet I have enough photos to completely cover at least one room in my home from floor to ceiling; however, you’d never know that unless you peeked under my bed where I store my collection. I would love to have a crafts room in my house, but we don’t have any rooms to spare right now.

For those of you who do have a crafts room, not only am I jealous of your space, but I am jealous of your potential with this room. Since I lack space in my home I have to improvise and make do with what I have. Under my bed is where a lot of my storage items are kept, so I have to be very crafty when I utilize that space. I enjoy scrapbooking, though I am by no means a fanatic, so I have yet to accumulate too much “stuff.” All of my scrapbooking tools fit into an oversized under-the-bed storage container, then I store my scrapbooks or photo albums either stacked on top of each other under the bed or in a similar oversized under-the-bed container.

My photos are kept organized in chronological order in multiple photo boxes. Photo boxes can be spendy. If you’d rather spend that money developing more pictures I would suggest using a gift box (make sure it’s more than four inches tall and six inches wide, though!) instead. To better organize your homemade photo box, consider using a large index card with a tab (you can make the tab yourself) to separate photos by category/month/quarter/year, etc. I have some store bought and homemade photo boxes and love them both. In years past I had fun decorating the boxes I made myself. You can get your kids involved by asking them to decorate their own photo box.

Another alternative to photo boxes is to create a box of photos. If you have several envelopes of pictures that you would prefer to be kept in their envelopes then I would suggest writing the date/contents of the pictures and storing all of your photo envelopes in a large cardboard box together.

If you use photo albums as a means to your photo storage, consider placing the albums in a prominent place so you can frequently reminisce, like on a bookshelf in the living room, in your entertainment center cabinet, or place some on your coffee table in place of books. Otherwise, find a great, safe box to store the albums in.

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