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Organizing Your Photos & Supplies

Let's move along then to this topic of organizing your photos and your stuff and it is an overwhelming topic to even think about but the key is to just break it down, break it down okay, so I'm going to stay focused on physical stuff that means the pictures that are printed the awards, the certificates, thie diplomas, thie report cards, the art think about everything that you have it has to do with pictures and memory keeping, but you physically have it and other words I'm not talking about digital digital organization is tomorrow okay? We will talk about it but it's a separate segment because we have a separate mentality when or organizing digital information. So does this seem familiar? What do we want to do? Tio organize all of our pictures and our stuff? We want to categorize first and then we want to contain arise and this is again it's super effective to do this first you want to do it in this border on dh you certainly want to do this before you start scrapbooking I can't emphas...

ize this enough that it's not a rule that isis this test in because some people really don't want to organize first they want to just dig and in start scrapbooking that's cool and you can do that, but my suggestion would be that you get all of your physical photos in one place one place and it could be in a room or it could be in just a table in a room it doesn't matter where it is in your house but just find a space where you can go all right home base every picture memorabilia, peace and whatever that I have is going to go into this area and plan to spread out because you're not just going to gather it. I would say this is a project right? And I don't wanna overwhelm anyone by by this idea that this is a project but organizational tasks can be a project you just need to know in your mind all right for the next hour I'm going to do this and it's going to come together or maybe this weekend on saturday I'm going to spend the whole morning doing this project and that we can just get it done because once it's done and establish, keeping up with it is much easier. So categorize your stuff um and this includes photos and memorabilia t give you an illustration, take all of your heritage photos and um and start and get those all into one place take off your photos from the seventies and eighties and put them in one place I'm totally generalizing here because everyone situations different maybe you have stuff from when you are baby but not again till you're in high school, well, whatever put those in piles if you inherited things from your spouse get all of his stuff for their stuff in one area so gather it all then categorize if you are just starting with current things that maybe it's your kids or whatever categorize that stuff so if you're doing it for if you're trying to get a grip on cat arising for your children keep in mind what your goals are when it when it comes to scrap booking and what you want to d'oh what is the ultimate goal? Were you trying to do an album for each kid? Were you trying to do family albums on lee? Are you trying to just focus on that one trip in that one year so you want to categorize based on the goals that you've already established for yourself so if you have if you have three kids then make a pile for each kid categorize it don't overwhelm yourself by just putting it all together and just thinking okay, well where do I go from here? Because that's very overwhelming I don't know how people can do it without breaking down and so kat organization is a pretty calm pretty easy concept to understand just make sure that you do it in categories that make sense I'll give an example when I when I inherited a bunch of pictures from my grandma I think it was my maternal grandma the way I categorize was I took her pictures and chronology small adji like I don't know years and days and there's nothing written on a lot of these pictures I wasn't going to try tio tell a story like from birth to death and everything in between an order I didn't you know it doesn't matter the year if it was nineteen fifteen or nineteen eighteen okay well whatever but I did want tio tell a story with it so instead of just randomness going into an album I did break it down and so her baby pictures earned one pile it's like three pictures right was no it's not a lot that was back before we all took a thousand pictures a day but I put over baby pictures together and did anything that was just general childhood that was another pile and then anything to do with her young married life getting married and just be married in those earlier years with my grandpa put those in a pile and then any pictures that had to do with the farm that they had lots of memories at the farm we all love the farm well all the foreign pictures went together if I saw pictures of her in her role as a homemaker than I would put pictures of her homemaking brawl you know those type of pictures in a pile so I kind of went dramatically not chronologically but different themes that kind of just go together in my grandma's life haven't scrapbook, tim? Yeah, I'm actually glad I hadn't yet because that was pre project life that I organized him, and now I'm just I'm just going to slip a mall and and then summary on some ideas of digital organization as well. Folder idea inside of your hard drive emily b says, I have all my photos stored on a hard drive in folders labeled by year and then in each year folder I have all the photos organized in folders by month, it helps me keep everything organized for projects like absolutely, yeah, and that's such an important tool for people to be organized, whether it's with visible stuff or digital, I'm glad she brought it up, and, like I said, we will dig in deep with digital tomorrow because that that is the simplest way to probably organized, but we'll talk about some people really don't even know how to did that, like get to that point. So our tech expert tomorrow really helped break it down and help us all understand how to organize our digital things. Once you've categorized, which I do think is important, then you want to contain arise just like we talked about, you want a place for everything and everything in its place, and you want to make sure that, well, there's, while that stuff is waiting. To be scrapped booked that you actually have them stored safely. So I would recommend that winder buying products that you keep that in mind. So this is what I mean, if you are sorting stuff and organizing stuff and getting ready, tio scrapbook like within the next couple weeks when you go home or maybe in the next couple months that's one thing, but if you know that you're going to be sitting on that for a while, my hair to stuff is a lower priority. Likas faras my what I can handle right now on what's coming next lower priority when you have a project that is a more long term, I'll get to this later. It's really important that it's not sitting, surrounded and acid filled or non archival material. And so be mindful. I'm not going to go into specific products there's way too many to cover as faras what's archival what's not, but in general, you are probably going to find labels on products that say this is safe and, you know, for example, like the little wooden box, you know, I would isn't something I probably put my pictures on, you know, because it can actually. It can actually cause damage over time, but you know it's just things different things that you want to consider when when touching your pictures with certain materials. Okay, so containerized based on the organization you just dead, you categorize now you can label stuff and you can get in containers until you're ready to scrap book and some people do prefer everything if it's flat they're just sticking it in the photo pocket pages they're using these because they're easy, they work the heating safe, they are kindly safe and they fit into an album so just like my plastics instead of a juror, I put them in an album because it looks nice you can keep all of your memorabilia, which is what I do at home. I keep all my stuff that's waiting to be scrapped, booked and an envelope age, so now let's, go ahead and I'm gonna dig into some pictures of a process that I went through in terms of bringing all together and are sorry not bring it all together, but I brought it together so that I could organize and get everything stored on dh ready so this is a process that I went through with my kids and the back story to this ten seconds worth is that I started this company passion for project life, passion for sharing it with people the irony in that is that? Can you imagine where I'm going with this as I myself was getting a little bit stuck I want to be really open about this this is another thing I haven't talked a whole lot about it because it's a secret, but because I've been so busy, you know, putting it out there and getting getting project life into other people's hands at my own project life, my own scrapbooking efforts have definitely suffered and that is not a complaint and it's not a dreadful comment and I'm not in despair because I know how because he it is to catch up, so I'm not worried about it. But the truth is, is that running a business regardless of your industry when you have when you own a company and you're running it there's I mean, it is ah lot it's a lot. So that's my reality, my reality is that my kids albums sat there on done and I knew it and I would continue taking my pictures digitally, right? That's how we all take pictures these days is digitally and I would collect anything that they had and I leased just keep it, just keep it, keep it, keep it just kind of pile it up, and so I got to a point a while back where I'm like, all right, well, that's great, I my own project life has been sacrificed for the sake of helping other people do project life, which I'm grateful to have the opportunity to do that and so less catch up now I'm not caught out, but my organization is intact and that's the key that helps me get to the point of being able to scrap up. So going to the questions that we've been we're hearing about on the internet right now that you're probably thinking your mind is okay, so all that artwork and all those report cars and all the stuff I'm going to show you step by step exactly how I organized my kid's stuff. Now this this can apply he's the same principles apply whether you're catching up on the past year or if you're catching up on twenty years, so don't get too married to my specific situation, which is I have three young kids and I had a few years work to catch up on because that's somewhere in the middle of the spectrum there's plenty of people who have way more than a few years to get up on same principle first step, bring it together, get a central place where you bring it together, the next step that we've talked about is categorizing and actually breaking things down in two places, so what I did is I use I am very fortunate to have this office space with that big I have a big, like peninsula in my desk, and I brought everything literally just piled on powder on everything was there one big pile? So my next step was to categorize, which we've been talking about. So how did I categorize naturally, porter, claire and crew, you could tell his oldest I'm are catching up to do on this one right here, because in the few years that point of running the business everyone's scott books are being sacrificed in my house and on dh, so I had I farther back to go with with porter on boulder, you get them or you you know where you have to. So what I did as I just said, piece by piece, paper by paper, ribbon, ribbon, whatever was sitting in that pile, who's ever it wass film win their pile? Okay, easy the's boxes, by the way, are where I used to kind of keep their stuff when they were younger. It was easier, but there's just I mean, you're just exploding out of that box in no time, so I have a pile for each of them. I will use sticky notes all the time I use sticky notes, you're going to see these pop up a lot, all right, so in this case I missed at home, I wasn't I took pictures to possibly blogger share with my readers, but I wasn't trying to impress anyone with what it was looking like. I just was like, let's, get these in the categories, so we're not looking pretty here. We're just doing it the next point. Yeah, please. Where did you keep that stuff before you started category before you. Where was it? Way over the the's. A little white that's. What I want to hear I have it. Did you do that with a system of okay, kids, put your stuff here when? Great question. We should talk about this for a minute because kids stuff could be scattered everywhere. I am generally keeping my name and generally organized person when I say everywhere that's a relative term in my mind it was everywhere. And someone else's mind they'd be like that's. The most organized thing ever everywhere to me means that I had these boxes for them, and I had them above my comm peter and but they were stacked on top of each other. So I found that I wasn't really like reaching out there and lifting open the lid and sticking stuff in. And so I have a corner in our office where any time something doesn't get thrown away because we keep it. Then and we'll talk about narrowing down and what to keep what to say, but I have a corner in the office that way over here, the kids know that I just was piling stuff there knowing that I was going to do to speak organizational project and so it really wasn't that scattered it was it was all kind of in our home central, which is our office and that's where we kept things a lot of people it does anybody else want to share where outs there little areas are where the accumulation happens of the stuff and if it's scattered, bring it on let's, talk about keep everything no. Okay, so right away you look at it in two and this is someone keeping what typically looks like we have we have. Okay, let's talk about skins of kids of school age. They come home with stuff all the time on a daily basis. We also have once a week wednesday folders where they come home and and that's really all the stuff that parents need to really look at. And so every time stuff comes home each day or thes wednesday folders, we go through it together great good job, honey oh can bring that great up, you know, we did that that that that we go through every paper, every piece of everything and we on the spot decide keep throw a keep recycle, keep whatever so we do it on the spot now if you're not doing it on the spot then your accumulations probably like this and we're talking about a different story and you need help and I will be there stat but really a lot of people probably have that same system we keep giveaway keep good way so or throw away and so that's what we typically do is we just go through it as we go and then what I have been doing prior to this is a shoving it in the corner so that stance your question that's where my stuff was as scattered but at least in one room of the house generally so categorize containerized what I did is I picked these boxes up a target I just went looking for something to put this stuff in I knew that it was temporary this is not for long term so I'm gonna be totally honest and say these archival lee made do they exist? Sure, but I was in a pinch I needed to do it now or I was gonna lose my mind and so I wanted to go to the local star pick up eh physical thing bringing home, organize that weekend and just be done so I'm just being realistic that sometimes you can't find the most you know archival acid free things, but that's because you've gotta work with what you've got to work with so I know it's temporary I wasn't concerned about acid content because I knew as soon as I got in there and organized, it was a matter of time before I was scrapbooking it ok? So I found these hanging file boxes is what they are there's a little space at the top, it's in the lit that actually holds memorabilia, but otherwise they're hanging file boxes, so I containerized at an organizing, yet I categorize first got him a categories had a child's pile, each child had a pile, and then I containerized and I put each child stuff in a box didn't organize it yet just stuck it in the box because for me, if I could just have it off in one place that's great, because it wasn't until the next weekend that I was like, all right, now I've got to organize it's, containerized it's in one place, and now I need to actually sort of so it's, so jam packed you can't see, but I have a label on the other side of the box that shows first grade second grade third grade so that each child has at least a bunch of stuff and each year not to the question that you're asking that's not my narrowing down point that's not when I throw stuff away and think about uh should we keep this should we throw this away is this fourth blah blah blah I don't even go there I just want to get the stuff organized and then later when I actually go to scrap book it that's when I start through and that's my next point as we were as we're wrapping up here with this organizational topic you take it to further organization I talked about post it notes man these come in handy alright this is literally what I did I created a physical grid chart on my space you could imagine how giddy I was about this because I like drawing charts I like making lists I like putting pen to paper but this was like alright here's my ex sell spreadsheets my my columns and my rose and how they're set up is that I have crew preschool claire first grade and porter fourth grade because I had already narrowed down member high categorized I did it by year per child after I organized for child I took one child at the time when okay that was this grade and that was this grade so that's why it's a process and then I have each each kid has their year and then across the top this is I mean I show closer pictures I labeled the piles by name with the great in the year and why does the piles per child is that it says straight into album, this is stuff. I'm not messing with it's literally going to go right into the album, whether it in an envelope age or a page protector or photo pocket page small, big, whatever is just going in the album, another pile is to photograph and print another topic later coming back to that. But anything that I knew ok, this is bulky, it's, dimensional it's too big it's, whatever. That's a whole pile to photograph it and then print it. This is another example that screws pile all right and then third pile is to scan in print. This is all flat stuff. A half by eleven usually it's just papers, but seriously, if we saved every paper for every year for every child, then that's that's a lot that's really alive. I don't encourage saving everything you really can narrow down so that's what I did in the process of organization as I broke it down per child per year. And then in these categories of what? To scan, what to photograph what goes straight in the album. So arrest my vocal course for just a second and find out what questions we have here and here we actually love to hear from the students video here you are very experienced scrapbook is off but you said that the game that you were beginnings but I mean this is a system that you recognize that you that organized at home some know some yes I can see both yeah we have the nodding and then we have the ball booth and all the hard work I've categorized clap for so I have all categorized not so much with all the other stuff the embellishment and all that other stuff that's on the product loyal members story royal massive your photos and your little grass yes, I know exactly what they are I can your time date everything but great feeling knows that feeling because if there were, I would tell my husband it's there I know it don't worry about it taking care of yeah, I don't feel so stressed about it but yeah, everything else is not organized yeah, yeah mess yeah, absolutely anybody else want to share as faras organization? Maybe what's standing out to you or what? What you're still we're still not sure about that I haven't covered when you talk about scanning it, he said stuff it goes right into the album so that's the actual physical, a paper ticket, whatever is actually gonna go in there and when you scan and take a picture you're putting that and then are you throwing away the original goal so you ask not glad the u s has maybe everybody will not like my answer I'm gonna answer personally, this is not advice this is you're asking me and I'm answering what ideo throw it away when I scan something unless it really is truly like a masterpiece that my child created or a really special letter from grandma or something that, like, really, truly that's a treasure I'm not talking about them stuff coming home from school really good perspective to keep and I will get back to actually answering the question is that when when you think about everything that's coming home and you love it all you think your kids graded everything and that's great, we all think that go just fast forward ten years begin within and my think for ten years really did that math tests with the a plus matter like really because you have ten other ones, you know? And so you have to really think a lot of its special it's all special but just let go of stuff let go stuff knowing that it's scan it's preserved your printing it out it's going into an album, you've done it and I don't want to encourage you to throw everything away that's not at all what I'm saying this is really special stuff that should not be discarded, but you should definitely consider thiss idea of cutting clutter out of your life a little bit and allowing yourself tio use technology and a smart system to get the stuff preserved so that you can let go of that kind of stuff so so that's what you asked me that's my answer is what I d'oh is when I make my little piles and once they've scanned it I'm going to be showing you more of that later actually tomorrow in fact I take that pilot goes into the recycle bin and when you do with you printed off a picture we're talking about that tomorrow for sure yeah yeah because once it's scanned it's not supposed to live on your computer now it's like your pictures they're not all supposed to be stuck on your computer once you photograph something or you scan something that's too large to fit in a scrap of the idea is that you get it in the scrapbook and so that's that's the goal and that's why I want to break it down and talk about it more in depth tomorrow because there's a process to that we've got a lot of comments about people asking about scanning and saving everything so we are going to get to that tomorrow we'll have a quick question from jack t shirt who's quite like discretion is saying how do you side with how do you decide which category I get tripped up just trying to figure out what the category should be well, when you're organizing, yeah, well, it depends. That's a great question. It depends on what your project is. So I'm going to tap back into what we talked about earlier, which is you really have to begin with the end in mind. You have tio focus, set your goals and ok what's my project right now so if you do fit in that category of doing it all small category, I should say it's, very few people, but if you're really trying to tackle, tackle it off, then you're literally taking everything in your house that we assessed earlier bring in all the one place, and they're breaking it down based on the goals that you have. And so if your goal is to d'oh family scrapbooks from nineteen, eighty four to current, well, my suggestion would be then make it nineteen, eighty four, nineteen, eighty five, nineteen, six and do it by year. If you think that way, I'm a very chronologically minded person because to me, it's not good or batter one's better or one's worse for me story happens that way sometimes, and your family grows and you grow kind of by time and so time organization makes sense to me. And that doesn't mean it has to be broken down an exact order. You could do one album for nineteen, eighty four, and it doesn't have to be in any order whatsoever but that, you know, whatever family highlights happened from that year's take him in, however, to answer the question, it is also highly recommended that you you do it how it does resonate with you in terms of not just the process, but the end result. In other words, chronologically, chronologically, doing your scott books doesn't work for everybody. Some people need to have it and some sort of an order where their loved ones and their family, their friends and they're very faith. Favorite people are in a scrapbook, and maybe another scrapbook is the places that you've been the travels that you've done, stacy julian, who were going to skype with on friday and a dear friend of finding the industry, has something called library of memories, and she breaks it down that way. She's she's not chronological, and I love that celebrate that we do it differently because I do it works for me. She doesn't work for her. We all a scrap bookers do what works for us so that's a great question when you get stuck on themes or topics or how they categorize just begin with the end in mind. What your goal, what what are you trying to get, teo? And then that will help you go either chronologically or thematically. The next question after you it's just from a holloway because she's asking about how does she organize all her children's scrapbooking memories? She says, she's expecting to have twenty yearsworth by the end of it is this question of what works for you. What makes logical sense, but you have a comment. Well, I just have a general consensus because I asked the online audience how organized they were, and whether different love is good to know, you know, it's all over the place, we have everything from a goal in mind, which is to digitize things and then percentages, you know, one hundred percent on digital photos, ninety five percent on the kid's artwork, fifty percent on printed photos and zero percent on other things on behalf in half. And then there's also a lot of support about throwing the things away that can be scanned and then reprinted and they actually seventeen and says, throw it away in printed on a blank for rice six project life card done move on, going on and getting back to this during the time with your family like he's, very beginning absolutely and it's important to I appreciate the fact that some people really do have a hard time letting go I understand that that's a reality for a lot of people and that is hard to throw things away so I don't discount that that's why I had to be very personal with my answer to you that for me scan or photograph it but by done that's it I'm good if something were to happen to that loved one tomorrow and I didn't have that physical thing wouldn't rip me up inside because I have a scan of it and so that's where you have to we like really discern what you keep based on like how how important it is so great great thoughts we got some great thoughts and questions the marina is asking or rather she's saying printing photos on a regular basis has been her biggest stumbling block. Sir, do you have any suggestions for streamlining that most important step on that's a huge of the huge question we will be talking about that even more tomorrow, but I would actually like if any of you want to chime in as well I must be thinking about it, but I think the process has to be what works for you again and so when it comes tio using technology, some people are super up tio to print frequently because they're using an app like an actual app on their smartphone that takes the pictures from the smartphone and there's a ton out there. I'm not going to name him because there's a bunch, but you can literally use these printing surface search services and print directly from your phone and get them great. That system works for you. I actually don't use that system as much. I personally like to get my photos off my camera on my phone onto the computer have him in my one big library topic for tomorrow. We're talking about that promise, and then I like to upload those images that I do want to print, which is not all of them, and then received that on an as needed basis, not a weekly or even a monthly basis. But whenever I have a project, I just go through, I upload, I get my pictures so it's such a I think that part of that has to do with we're just in this digital era and that's why we have a whole segment on this tomorrow, so we're definitely going to drill, kevin, my guest instructor and my brother has a tech expert who's going to be here talking all about that process is a big deal of people can't figure out their process for printing, they will get stuck. They will, and it sounds like this person was getting think so. This is not the brother who has the naughty words scrapbooking way no, he certainly he certainly values what this is about. A couple of questions on this is almost about the daunting task I think of when you're starting, when you're not organized at all and generous, saying she'd like to know how to approach catching up when you've got years and years of backlog and jane sees mom's similar question what are your suggestions to keep caught up on project life of you're way behind it is it is what I outlined in terms of breaking it down. It really is starting by bringing into one spot it's amazing what happened? I could talk all day long about this, but if you it just pause this show of your part in this later and just go do it, you just have to find that spot where in your house you literally can bring it all together and then and then start sorting it according to year or theme used sticky notes when you can actually label things and put it, you know, put it in an organized fashion that you can see label this is grandma grandpa's farm, this is my mom's childhood. This is our family in the eighties, whatever those categories are, I think that's going to be an effective way to get started is you just have to start you have to just bring it all together and then categorize and may I add one thing, do it by yourself because if there's any friends of way, yeah, back seat driver e o you're young, which you're your kids have a young like mine? Oh my goodness, no, no, no, that is the one thing I didn't scott book with my kids around, but yeah, when it comes to a physic call organizational project, clear out, everybody mom is busy like really just focused on it and destructions would be really hard and it would be a stumbling block. We've had some great comments from people saying they are actually, you know, watching this is they're trying to get the kids to bed or they're trying to feed them only on things when it comes to the actual scrapbooking, I think becky's advice into you on your own is probably probably best. Now we're going to take another fifteen minute break now, but thinking we're going talk about when we come back, we're going to talk about actually bringing everything together, and we talked a lot about getting rolling with this and what it means and organizing now, but we are now you guys and me, we are going to scrap book, we're going to actually take the stacks of pictures that you brought with you and then hopefully people at home how stuff ready to go and we're going to at least get this feel of like, the flow of how it works and how it comes together really excited the room and actually allow ladies today brought lots of goodies with them that they be sitting on the tables and people have been asking one of those four you're going to find out just couple of questions, comments to finish with seventeen and m sense says it seems back in, I think alike I also have a big envelope in front of each of my albums for easy stashing. This is especially useful for my kid's school albums, and sal is saying, I love the becky's addressing the known syndrome of platter in the in the scrap booking industry. Being organized frees up the creative juices for the real stuff that matters she's loving this message. So the becky oh, I'm so glad to hear that because it's such an interesting thing when you get organized, I actually have always felt when I'm organized. I'm more creative and that's. Usually, it usually doesn't. People don't think of it that way. People think creativity is just free spirit, and, you know, so I appreciate that she is like minded.