For the next few days I’m going to help you through organizing pictures. Yep, still 30 minutes at a time.

• Gather your photographs from the last year. OK, I understand this may take more than 30 minutes for some, but most of you have a stack of them somewhere in the house. Or you can start with any pictures that you want to save from last month’s holiday cards. This includes kid’s school pictures, or any other type of pictures that you made or received. Just gather them together.

• Now quickly sort through them. Decide which ones are good enough to keep for an album, which ones are maybe interesting, but not high-quality or high-value (these should go in a box), and which ones can be canned. See, it’s as easy as A/B/C.

• Here’s where I break from tradition. I honestly don’t know a single soul who has time to create photo albums anymore. I have completely converted over to photo-safe storage boxes. The Legacy Boxes are perfect. Don’t risk your photos to shoe boxes (which contain acid that will destroy your pictures) and plastic bags (which will not provide enough structural support, and lead to bent and torn pictures).

• Turn them over and make light notations with pencil or a photo safe pen, to record who, when, where, and why. It’s just amazing how quickly we forget these details.

Get those photos out of the basement, attic, and garage. Photos like to live in the same environment you live in, not a too wet or cold, too hot or dry.

If you can gather your paper photos from last year, you’ll probably be able to get through this in less than 30 minutes. If you are struggling with photos from decades past, you might want to schedule out several 30 minute sessions over a week or so to review them. Use the same A/B/C process above.

Couldn’t find any physical pictures from last year? That probably means your photos are all digital, and likely still trapped on your phone. We’ll be back with more tomorrow on organizing digital photos.

This post is part of my 31 days of 30-minute Organizing Projects. Be sure to subscribe for daily emails  with projects you can complete in just a few minutes to start your New Year off right.