I know I’m not the only one out there that has a ton of pictures both digitally and physically taking up space, probably with little to no organization. (At least, I really hope I’m not the only one!)
What I’m trying to avoid…
I won’t lie, this is the most daunting task of my 2016 goals. The idea of not only sorting through and deciding which pictures still mean something and which are worth discarding forever, but also figuring out what to do with the many I know are left seems so immense. I think part of that is I’m not even clear on why we are keeping them. Are we keeping them to aid our own memories of good times we’ve forgotten? Because they make us happy? Because they are all we have left of people who are now gone so why discard a single, blurry moment? As a way to pass down stories to the future? I think for me it is a little bit of all that which is why it is so hard to decide what to do with these photos.
So I’m starting small and I’m starting with something that doesn’t have years of distance and loss built into it. I’m starting with catching up on memory keeping for my son. A friend of mine who keeps a wonderful blog introduced me to Project Life this summer. At first when she mentioned it and I looked stuff up online, I thought it was a little too fancy and expensive for me, but then she showed me the online app and pointed out that high quality printing could be the only thing I paid for if I really wanted to keep it simple and I was hooked.
Of course, then we directed a marathon of shows and moved and life sped by so I am just now sitting down to catch up from October through the end of 2015 and also resolving to stay caught up on my digital pages for this year in the meantime. Then I just have to figure out what I do with all my digital images once I print the pages I create. Those of you that memory keep, PLEASE share what you do with yours? Do you back up ALL your pictures? All the ones that aren’t blurry? Only the ones you deemed worthy of the scrapbook? Only the ones you didn’t/won’t have a physical copy of? And WHAT ABOUT VIDEOS (which in some ways I find even more precious) ?!?!?!?!? Or do you use some other method? Why did you choose that way? And how do you organize the digital files? (I’m not sure I want to spend a ton on multiple external hard drives to store photos and videos)
Share your wisdom or say a prayer as I wade through this huge task this year. I’ll try to keep you all updated!
Alphabet Resolutions 
Last year we made a book of 2014, and it was really special. Just a small, inexpensive, hardcover photobook. The idea was that it would be something like a new years present, but it ended up coming about Valentine’s day and that was perfect. I don’t know if we’ll do this every year forever, but it was pretty special to have the record for our time living in Europe, so we’re doing it again this year. There’s something really special about how our memories form around images. Things we entirely forget come back when we see them.
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YES! I love that. I think the project life stuff appeals to me with it’s calendar year sequence. I love that it came around Valentine’s day! My mom often thinks about sending Valentine’s cards instead of Christmas cards because that’s her favorite holiday.
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On the other end of the spectrum—what do you do with all the non-special pictures—I’ve been going through mine recently trying to pare down. I find it helpful to imagine I’m telling someone about the trip or event shown as I click through. If I can’t remember what was going on, or find myself wishing that I’d skipped these 10 identical pictures of palm trees so as not to bore the person, then I cut them out. The goal is for my entire photo library to fit well under the 50 gigabyte icloud storage plan ($1/month).
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I love that strategy!! and I might want to look into the iCloud storage because my free amount is not doing the trick.
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