Keeping up with Phone Pics

Hey! It's June 1st so all my monthly to-dos are swirling in my head....I wanted to share an easy strategy I use to keep my personal camera pictures tidied and cleaned up. Just like all the other things you have to maintain as an adult....a house...your health...kids laundry, your pictures need a little TLC, too. Imagine if you didn't deal with cleaning the laundry ever....it would get out of control and you would have to go naked. I'm not saying the same will happen if you don't keep your pictures organized but maybe it's a strong possibility. Yikes. With the crazy amount of pictures we all take every month, you have to do a little bit to keep it under control. I find, depending on the month, I can collect anywhere from 500-1000 pictures on my camera phone and most of them are totally worthless.

At the beginning of each month, I like to look back on the previous month and just take stock of the pictures I am choosing to keep in my collection. Instead of scrolling aimlessly through social media, I purposely spend a few minutes just cleaning up my camera roll. I know my future self with thank me! So today, I will spend some time looking at my pictures from May 1-30 and move into June feeling a bit calmer.

1. DELETE! Look through your pictures. You can start at today and work backwards until you get to May 1. Or you can start at May 1 and work to now. Delete anything you don't need. Be ruthless. Edit, Edit, Edit!!! All those screenshots you took to remember the address of the place you needed to go...TRASH! The 38 pictures you took on burst mode of your child jumping off the swings....PICK THE BEST ONE and trash the rest! The funny thing you took a picture of and texted your friend.....TRASH IT.

2. Now that you're left with only the keepers, favorite the ones that are your family favorites! These are ones that you will want to put in an end of year album, the ones you want your kids to have when they are grown up. THE BEST OF THE BEST! Your future self will be happy you did this extra step.

3. If you have any pictures you want for reference, move them to an album to make it easy to find. For example, if you take pics or screenshots of books you want to read.....make an album called "Books to Read" and move them into that album each month. If you are building a house and you want to keep all your construction pics together, make an album for any pics. Make a different album for "Building Ideas." If you want to keep your kids school related pics together, make an album for those, too. Really, you can customize your albums to work FOR YOU. If you can work from a computer, you can even go further and do some tagging or making smart albums but that's just icing on the cake.

4. One of the best parts of going through my pics is the to-do list it generates. Personally, I often take screenshots of pictures of things I need to do, things I need to buy, things I need to deal with, etc. When I go through my camera roll, I often find a few things that got overlooked and it reminds me to take care of those things. My #4 is to deal with those things, delete the pic and move on.

That's it. It shouldn't take you that long to tidy up your pics from last month. I encourage you to be real with the amount of pics you need to carry forward. Less is more! And when you take your pics one month at a time, it's pretty manageable and easy to keep on top of it. Go forth and get organized! And if you want even more help getting your digital and phone pics under control, I'm always happy to help!!!