Thanks to the lovely folks at Smead, a valued partner in the organizing field, for having me on their podcast recently on the topic of saving your photos. September is #SaveYourPhotos month, in concert with National Preparedness Month.

If you’re like most people, about now, you’re saying, yeah, yeah, I’ll get to that when I’m retired. It all just seems so overwhelming right now.

We are in the middle of working with a client who had a house fire several years ago, and she lost some very important family photos. Luckily, most of her photos weren’t destroyed, but they were very disorganized after having been thrown in three big boxes while the house was remodeled and repaired. While working with her photos, our white gloves got very, very dirty from the soot still remaining on the photos. But just two weeks into the project, we have over 7,200 photos organized by date. We’re working with the client now to remove duplicates and prepare the collection for scanning, so they won’t be threatened by fire- or anything else- ever again.

Do your photos look like this, stored in a broken cardboard box?

I get it. The idea of organizing your photos CAN be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. So how do you break down your family’s photo organizing project? Don’t wait until your memories are threatened by fire, flood, or anything else. Listen to this Smead podcast (audio only)

or video (via youtube) to get the basics on how to think about this project.

Listen carefully, and you’ll hear the ONE thing you need to keep in mind when you start organizing your photos. It probably isn’t what you think.

If you like getting organizing inspiration via podcast, I’d encourage you to subscribe to the Smead channel.

Want to get started organizing your photos without spinning your wheels? Come to our #SaveYourPhotos Open House next Saturday, 9/23/17 from 10-1 pm. Please RSVP here.