Do you feel stuck trying to organize a lifetime of print photos? Chances are you are making one big mistake that is slowing you down…or stopping you altogether. What is the biggest mistake you are making when organizing your photos?

Organizing photos by person!

Don’t do it.

Organize photos by date (aka timeline or chronology) instead.

THE One Big Mistake With Organizing Your Old Photos

So many of our clients think they need to start organizing photos by separating their photos by person or by kid. They imagine splitting up the family photos and giving a batch of photos to Kid 1, a batch of photos to Kid 2, and so on. It seems so logical, but here’s why it doesn’t work:

1. If you have more than one child, as soon as you come to a picture with more than one kid, you won’t know which kid to give that print to. (With digital photos, you don’t have to decide! Give them both a copy!)
2. What about those photos from Kid 1’s birthday party that only have Uncle Ted or Aunt Sue in them? Do they go to Kid 1? Or do they go in some other pile? You can start to see the problems.
3. If you plan to scan photos, you can let the software do the work. Face tagging can find all of the faces easily, way faster and more accurately than you can.
4. To make sense of your people through the years, you’ll need to eventually organize by timeline anyway. Start there.

It’s true, you might not have dates stamped on all your photos, but that’s ok. We notice that about 75% of any photo collection has some printed dates, handwritten dates, or other clear date markers. You don’t have to rebuild your photo timeline perfectly to have it make sense. If you are sorting your own photos, just do the best you can. If your photos are very disorganized, getting your photos into order in the right year, or even the right decade, can make all the difference when you try to find, share, and enjoy your old photos.

Think of the photos on your phone. You scroll and find photos easily in your timeline, right? That’s because your phone organizes them by date!

Sorting by year is the first step before digitizing (scanning) your photos. If you are just starting (or plan to start) your photo organizing project, this one little tip can save you hours and hours!

For more free ideas on organizing your photos, click here.

Need a roadmap to build your first photo book? My easy, online class is ready to start when you are.

Let me know how it goes in the comments below.