The 10 cheapest methods of organizing photos
Both digital and print photos take up a lot of space, and it’s so easy to mix up photos that end up in a mess of images you’d rather tuck under your bed or delete from your computer than tidy up. Sometimes simply deciding how to organize your photos without spending a fortune is more of a challenge than the organization itself. Here are some of the best inexpensive ways to organize your photos.
1) Ziploc bags
This is one of our favourites. It’s low cost, protects images, and is great because it allows anyone to write on the Ziploc with a permanent marker to show the contents of the bag.
2) Hanging folders
If you don’t have a large number of photos, but want to keep your prints organized in one place, hanging file folders are a good option. Labeling your photos is easy when you use hanging file folders. The Container Store has great options.
3) Shoe boxes
A tried and true method of storing photos, using shoe boxes alleviates clutter and is a great way to recycle shoe boxes instead of throwing them away. Shoeboxes allow you to categorize a large number of prints.
4) rubber bands
Separate different events or years and color code them with a variety of colored rubber bands.
5) Paper Photo Boxes
This is a step up from shoe boxes, but a cleaner, more organized look for storing your photos.
6) plastic photo boxes
These cost a bit more than paper photo boxes, but the benefit here is that plastic photo boxes are made specifically to hold your photos and will keep your prints from getting dusty since they’ll be in an airtight container.
7) plastic boxes
No need to buy plastic boxes specifically designed for photos, regular plastic containers that come in an endless variety of sizes and shapes will do the trick. You may find that different shapes of plastic boxes are better suited to the space you have to store your photos.
8) Scan with a digital archivist – store with a third-party service provider
This is probably the easiest and most effective way to store your digital photos if you’re willing to spend some money. It’s worth the investment to have a digital archivist come to his house to back up and categorize his photos, especially in case he loses the original files.
9) Categorize on your Apple computer in iPhoto
If you’re an Apple user, a great way to organize your photos is in iPhoto. iPhoto breaks it all down, letting you organize your photos by dates taken, events, and even uses facial recognition technology to organize the photos of everyone in your photos.
10) Kraft paper with rubber bands
If you like being able to quickly sort your prints, labeling your photos with butcher paper and wrapping them with a rubber band is another great way to organize your prints.
After exploring several different ways to organize photos, our seasoned digital archivists prefer #1 Ziploc bags. It is the cheapest, fastest, safest and most versatile method of organizing photos. The other methods have their place to help you organize your photos, but they can cost more or take too long.
Efficiency and getting to digital quickly is the top priority for our digital archivists. Organizing physical photos often has a lower priority than digital copies. Once you have them digitally, you can easily organize them on your computer.