Photo Organization

So are you thinking of doing your own scrapbooks or having one made? I know - I was there once too. Have you seen the adorable, acid free paper in your local craft store. How can you NOT want to start this hobby! Or maybe you have zillions of photos sitting in shoeboxes - never being "ooohed" and "aaahed" over by anyone, just knowing that there must be a better way. No matter who you are, if you have considered trying out this hobby called scrapbooking - welcome!

I had been taking photos off and on and then when my first nephew was born I started taking alot more photos! My sister had started scrapbooking and then I decided I wanted to give this a whirl so I started buying stuff and before I knew it I had enough for an entire room! I just love scrapbooking and I love the results that come with my hobby.

One of the very first steps in beginning scrapbooking is organizing your photos. This is a big task - actually the more photos you have stored, the bigger the job. I didn't have that many so it didn't too long. Also, there are different methods to organizing your photos. Over time, you may find a method that you prefer. However, to get you started, I will share with you how I did it in three steps.

Step #1. To start, I collected all of my photos. Every single one! I went through my home and brought every photo album and every shoebox to my work space. I knew that I needed decent size work space, so for my sorting, I went to my living room floor.

Step #2. Now that I had all of my photos together, I began sorting. I started with a pile and sorted it by catagory such as family, vacations, extended family, friends, college, my nephews and so on. I kept working my way through every single photo until they were all in their appropriate piles. You can also do this by year instead which is a better way if you have a large amount of photos.

Step #3. After the sorting into catagories or years, sort each pile chronologically - January, February, and on through December. I used one of my shoeboxes to make a sort of index with my newly sorted photos. At the beginning I had my earliest photos indexed with the first year. Every year after that was labeled also. When I was done sorting, I had boxes of perfectly sorted photos -- all ready for my new hobby!

Now it's your turn - start organizing those photos of yours and begin your new hobby!