How to Organize Our Family Pictures?

I don't have an answer to the organization question because I think that is highly personal according to your own needs. Besides, I haven't really figured that one out for myself yet! However, I do want to caution you to be sure you have a good back-up for the pictures on your computer. So many things can happen to make you lose those! Most recently our daughter's computer was stolen ... and with it all of the pictures she hadn't either printed or shared with someone else are gone! Computers also crash, and you can't always rescue such data once the computer has quit on you. I suggest you share all you can with family members, or put the pictures on back up disks, USB keys, an online back-up service, or whatever other method you may prefer to back them up.

You are right that you print only the most memorable ones for your album. Some people print ALL the photos and it gets too overwhelming so the project never gets finished!

That would be a wonderful treasure to have family albums. Most people do not take the TIME to do this, and when you are married for twenty five years...20 more years, you may have forgotten details that you thought you would not. I'm speaking from experience, as I did not start my albums until my children were older....not the best idea...learn from me!

One suggestions that I do have is that you consider making an album for each child. That way, when you are older, they can have THEIR album. Make it a written legacy of your love for them. How? When you do your journalling, write "to" them, using their name all the time. Everybody loves hearing and reading their name.

For example, instead of "Easter, 2011," write, "John, look how handsome you look in your Easter outfit!" So you are making it about your "love" as a mother...passed down, in your child's "history," which is what an album is.

Blessed are your children!

Here are some "how to" videos with will really help you. "Organizational Solutions" is a short video that I think you will enjoy at this Creative Memories "how to" video library:

http://antiochcompany.cachefly.net/video/YT/YT.html

There are other short videos that will help you there!

Another thing you will find: when you actually make your family or children's albums...you will LOVE doing so because you are looking at photos of your precious family...the people you love most in the world!

For more ideas go to my Creative Memories website:
www.mycmsite.com/marycluley
then "project center" at the bottom right then "traditional" for thousands of layout ideas. Contact me through my website if I can help you with ideas to get started. I have LOT!!

Also, make your first page of each album really "stand out" with a large photo or 7 x 7 and anyway I could go on and on. Blessings!

FIRST of all: Make SURE you back-up all of your photos.... onto an external hard drive or cd's. If in case, you have computer problems or it crashes. Then you will not lose all the photos on your computer.

2) Put them in photo books. Using like www.kodakgallery.com or Costco photo center etc.

3) I do ANNUAL photo books. Per year. In it, is all the things/occasions/events in that year. That way, you just have everything in 1 photo book, annually.

4) Then I order 2 books. One for each of my kids... for when they get older.

5) When you store the photos on your computer, do it by "date taken." That is the easiest way to reference, photos. And put a heading on each file folder.... per the occasion etc.

Upload them to a site such as www.shutterfly.com and start making albums! Shutterfly stores your pictures (there is no limit to the amount) and you can buy a cd with the pictures if your computer is ever stolen or crashes. I bought an external hard drive and THOUGHT I had transferred all of my pictures over and then deleted them all. Come to find out, I couldn't do the transfer from a desktop short cut and all of the pictures were gone. I tried to go through the steps of restoring, ugh! but then remembered that Shutterfly had all of the pictures. :) I do one album a year for our son. I also do smaller albums with vacations, San Franciso Giants World Series, Mother's Day albums as gifts, etc. Make a wedding album and then, like you said, one for each year of your married life. Good luck!

I organize by the year, & then break it down by the event or seasons.

I organize my photos in boxes chronologically. I'm afraid I haven't made albums in years. I don't have the photo thing figured out but I do have them stored. I think an album a year is alot - if you're married 25 years - that's 25 albums...I do albums for special events - vacations, for instance, and did lots of albums when the kids where little. Now that they are 9 and 12 I rarely take pictures - that sort of solves the "how to store" problem. When I was a kid my parents took very few pictures and perhaps because there are few I treasure them - So I wonder if it's not really necessary to have a ton of pictures. Good-luck.

I've spent the last year+ trying to do the very same thing! My recommendation would be to organize how it makes most sense to YOU to find them.

In my 'family' album I have a folder for each member of our family, i.e. dad, mom, son, daughter, grandparents with kids, extended family. Each kid has pictures primarily of them, or they are in the picture. Then I have the same type of 'album' and 'folders' for both MY side of the family and my husband's side of the family. Yes, there may be duplicates in multiple folders, but for my brain if I'm trying to find pictures for Grandparent Day or Star of the Week, I can go straight to that folder. It also helps that if a family member is wanting a bunch of pictures or is looking for a particular picture, not only do I have and idea where it is, but I can burn a disc of pictures of JUST that person or JUST that family.

I also have an 'album' for Trips and vacations then within that have subfolders for each trip and all the pictures from that trip. So 2002 Disney World, 2004 NYC.

My Home and Yard album I have before and after pictures of landscaping, remodels, general home improvement. As well as pieces of furniture.

I even have a Misc Pics of 2011, which of course changes every year. But as I'm filing pictures through out the year, if I really like one and think I may want to use it for the Christmas card I also save it to that folder so I'm not hunting through a bunch of pictures and albums later.

I initially started setting it up by year, but as I said, this makes more sense to me. It does take more time and seems redundant to some, but they are my pictures on my computer! ;)

I'm not going to address organizing, because you've gotten a lot of good advice... I'm going to address "albums".
I would suggest sitting down with each kid and letting them pick a few pictures that THEY want to put into their own album. Creating an album for them is a GREAT idea, but I think that they should create their own also. The album you create will be for you to give to them later as memories of this time in their lives. But an album they create now is for them to look at NOW to remember their friends, family they miss and fun things they've done.
I also agree with making sure you have a good backup system in place so you don't lose your pictures if your computer fails.

I put everything on Facebook in Albums as I take them, so my family can see them. If I want to go back later and print, they are already grouped by that event. Occcasionally, when I have time on my hands, I go into the old ones and do the same. Slowly making it through! As I do, I send my very favorites to my Walgreens picture account so I can make prints later. That's actually been a great help for gift giving. I can go on the website and pull together a calendar or picture book as a gift in no time.

I have all of our digital photos on our computer by year. They are then categorized chronologically. I waited until I had thousands of pictures before I organized them this way. I DO not recommend that :-) It took me days if not weeks to get them all sorted, it was exhausting! Now I transfer photos from my camera weekly before it gets overwhelming to deal with.

If you do not already PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE save a backup disk of your photos. We also have ours on an external hard-drive that is only connected to the pc when I'm photo editing. It would royally suck if we lost all of our photos ( we have over 10,000 not including our old film/printed ones).

Hope you find a way that works for you :-)

I name all pictures by date taken, year first so they're sorted automatically, i.e. 2011-08-31 (1), 2011-08-31 (2), etc. Then I put them in month and year folders--I take a lot of pictures. I use Picasa to tag the pictures with the names of the people in them and the events depicted, sometimes the locations too. Once the picture is tagged, the tag follows it everywhere it's uploaded or sent. I upload my favorites to an online service (I use flickr) and make a backup on an external hard drive. Hope this helps!

I have two folders: one sorted by date, the other by occasion. If I had to pick only one way, I'd sort chronologically, with folders for each year containing subfolders for each month. Then it would be easy to find the Halloween and first day of school pictures (for example).