The Beginner’s Guide to Organizing Your Printed Photos

If you are of a certain age, you probably have printed photographs scattered all over the house: treasured black and white pictures of your great-grandparents in frames, multiple packages of school pictures in a drawer, and photo envelopes from the 80s with duplicate, even triplicate prints in a bin in the closet.  

Now is the time to get these print pictures out of the drawers, boxes, and closets and back into your life. It’s also crucial to safeguard your treasured family memories against the ravages of time.

Step 1: What’s Your Goal?

Before you even lay a hand on the first photo, take a minute to consider your ultimate goal with your pictures. Your goal may be broad or specific, and that’s okay. Just give it some thought first.

• Do you want to save your photos for your children and grandchildren, digitized and stored in photo-safe boxes and albums? 
• Do you want to create a fabulous video montage for your daughter’s wedding? 
• Do you want to create a fabulous photo wall featuring wedding photos of your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents?
• Do you just want to be able to find that cute photo of the kids at Disney World to share on Instagram?

Whatever your final goal may be, give some thought to it now. This goal will become your project’s road map and help you prioritize your actions as you work through the photo organizing process.

Step 2: Hunt & Gather

You can’t decide on your photo organizing process until you know exactly what you are working with. Scour your house and find all your printed photos, including loose pictures, photo albums, and even slides and negatives.

As a Certified Personal Photo Organizer (and a former residential organizer), I have found photographs squirreled away in some very strange places. Here are just a few ideas of where to look. You can find even more photo-hiding places here.

• Photo albums
• Photo boxes
• Framed pictures (be sure to look behind other pictures in the frames)
• Scrapbooks
• Relatives’ homes
• Plastic bins
• On the refrigerator
• Drawers – dresser, junk, kitchen, coffee table, china cabinet
• Closets

Grab your own copy of our list of over 50 places your precious family photos may be hiding.

As you find the pictures, gather them all into one place in your house, such as your home office or the rarely used dining room table. If you don’t have a large space that you can reserve exclusively for your photo project for an extended period of time, get a couple of bins or boxes to store everything in while you work.

At this point, you might feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of printed photos you have. That’s perfectly normal. I have inherited photos from both sets of grandparents and other relatives. When I look at how many I have to deal with, even I get overwhelmed, and I organize photos for a living!

Take a deep breath, remember that this is your family’s legacy, and it is worth your time and energy.

Step 3: Have the Proper Tools

As my dad used to say, any good project starts with the proper tools. Photo organizing is no exception. Set yourself up for success with a few of these basic items.

A few handy tools include:

• Sticky notes and index cards for sorting
• Photo-safe pencils for writing on the back of pictures
• Waxed dental floss or Teflon floss for removing photos from old magnetic albums
• Nitrile gloves for handling photos and protecting them from the oils on your hands
• Photo cleaning cloth for removing dust and fingerprints
• Dust mask to protect you from the dust old photos tend to have, especially if you have allergies
• Garbage bags – for throwing away all those duplicates and bad photos.

(Some of these links are affiliate links, meaning I make a little money if you purchase.)

My favorite tools for organizing, sorting, scanning and preserving printed pictures here.

Step 4: Sort Your Photographs

Now, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get to work by putting some order to the chaos.

In this step, you are going to sort your photos, but first it is really important to establish HOW you are going to sort before you start. The most common ways to sort are chronological and by themes (ie. Holidays, vacations, birthdays, by person). You can also use a hybrid method. For example all the Christmas photos are together, but they are sorted by year as well.

If you decide to sort chronologically (my preferred method), there are a few tricks to help you find the dates. If you don’t know the exact dates of pictures, you can often find clues such as printer’s codes on the back of the picture, a receipt attached to the developing envelope, or even the hairstyles of the people in the photo. Sometimes, you have to be a photo detective (this blog post can help). Don’t worry if your chronological sorting is not perfect. You can always tweak it later and remember that good is better than perfect.

If possible, sort directly into photo-safe boxes to avoid further damage in the long term and the possibility of the cat knocking over your piles in the short term.  Be sure to remove photos from any plastic bags and the developing envelopes. One caveat to this is if the envelope has details written on it, which can help you identify the photos later.  Be sure to keep the negatives with the photographs. They will be helpful in the next step. 

The sorting process is the perfect time to toss any duplicate prints and blurry shots. When we paid to develop the roll of film, we also tended to keep all 24 photos from that roll. You and I both know they weren’t all good; take a minute to delete the bad shots. I hereby give you permission to throw these junk photos away.

If you have intact photo albums, now is a good time to decide what you are going to do with them. I highly recommend removing the pictures from those “magnetic” albums from the 70s and 80s. The acidic adhesive is slowly eating away at the back of your pictures, while the plastic page cover is trapping the acidic fumes from this chemical reaction and damaging the front of your photos. You may want to keep some photo albums intact, such as the black paper ones from your grandmother, in which she chronicled your family history. It would be a shame to destroy such a treasured family heirloom.

If you remove the pictures from your albums, sort these photos into the boxes as well. You can always put them back into a photo-safe album later.

Step 5: Scan Your Pictures

These photos are the treasured record of your family’s life and legacy.  One of the best ways to allow that legacy to live on is to create a digital copy of the photos.  Scanning and digitizing your photos allows you to make a backup copy of the print (guarding against disaster) and creates a way to more easily share and enjoy your pictures in this digital age. 

If you have negatives and slides, it is helpful to find a film scanner that will scan them as well (or find a photo organizer that can do it for you). If you have both the printed photos and the negatives that go with them, it is better to scan the negatives if you can. They will give you a truer color and a clearer picture. You can find my scanner recommendations here.

Step 6: Enjoy and Share Your Photos

Once you have done all the hard work of finding, sorting, and scanning your family’s photos, now it’s time to enjoy your photos again. 

Frame your favorite pictures and display them in your home or office. 

Create a photo book of some of your favorite vacation shots. 

Create and give a photo gift for Christmas.

Use a Wi-Fi-enabled digital picture frame like the Nixplay Digital frame to enjoy your photos every day and update them at the drop of a hat.

There are so many ways to share your photos these days. That’s the real fun part of this process.

Are you still completely overwhelmed?  Take a deep breath and do a little at a time. Your photos didn’t get out of control overnight. They have been a lifetime (or two) in the making. It’s going to take a little while to gather them back together.

Look at the time and money you spend on this project as an investment in your memories and your family’s history.

You will not regret it. I promise!

If you get stuck or just want to turn it all over to a professional photo organizer (like me), visit The Photo Managers website to find one near you.

Interested in Working with Good Life Photo Solutions?

We work in person and remotely with local clients in southeastern Virginia as well as with clients from all over the US and around the world. The first step to working together is to schedule a complimentary Zoom/phone consultation to discuss your project and goals and how we may be able to help. There is no obligation to purchase additional services. You can schedule your consultation here.

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*This post may contain affiliate links. This means if you purchase from a link, Good Life Photo Solutions LLC may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting my small business. See our disclosure policy for full details.

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