Easy Tips to Organize Print Photos

Inside: Tired of the printed photo clutter? Check out these easy tips to organize print photos. You can easily organize your photos without a lot of time.

I remember when I was a kid I loved getting pictures developed. Every year when we would go on vacation we would go through a roll of film and then get it developed when we got back.

Even when my husband and I got married we took a regular camera on our honeymoon.

It wasn’t until we had our son a couple of years later that we bought a digital camera.

Now we never even use the camera. We just pull out our phones and take a picture.

Because of this we rarely get pictures developed anymore and store most of them on the computer.

Besides scrapbooking a few of our vacations most of our actual printed photos were just stored in shoe boxes or folders around the house. Recently I wanted to get them a little more organized.

I wanted to find a way to neatly organize print photos without spending a lot of time separating or organizing them. After looking around I found a perfect solution for organizing print photos.

If you are tired of pictures all-around your house and no order check out these easy tips to organize print photos.

How To Organize Printed Photos

To organize your loose photos I recommend a few things.

Time to declutter
Bins to store the photos in
Acid-free way to label photos

The container store has these great acid free craft and photo storage containers. You can also pick them up from Amazon if you don’t have a container store nearby.

You can get them in different sizes and colors but I picked up a larger bin that has 12 colored containers. I liked them because each container inside was large so it could hold a lot of photos, plus because they are acid-free I don’t need to worry about my pictures being damaged.

If you don’t need something as sturdy as plastic you could also use this box and envelope system from Amazon. It would be great to use if you want to store your pictures in drawers or in a cabinet.

Declutter The Photos

I highly recommend you start by decluttering your old photos.

If your pictures are anything like mine you have a few blurred photos or just odd ones you really don’t care to keep.

Throw out any old photos that you don’t want to organize and then you can get started organizing and sorting the printed photos that you do want to keep.

Sort The Printed Photos Into Groups

After you declutter all the photos you don’t want to keep then take all the loose pictures you have and sort them into groups.

There are a few ways you can do this.

With our pictures, each family member got their own container plus I did some for vacations, pets, and a few weddings we were in.

I preferred to sort them into larger groups to make the sorting easier and because the containers store a lot of pictures.

However, if you are using smaller envelopes or have a lot of pictures you may want to organize them into smaller categories.

Another way to go about organizing printed photos is sorting them by year. This is an easy way if you are just dealing with a few years worth of photos.

If you are dealing with 30 plus years of photos it may be harder to sort them into years.

You can choose a way that works best for the photos that you have.

Organizing the printed photos into groups takes the most time, but can also be fun. I had a good time looking through all of our photos.

Label The Photos

There are a few different ways to label the photos. You can label them by writing on the back of the photo or you can just label the containers you put them in.

If you label the printed photos do so safely so you don’t damage them. You can buy acid-free pens so they don’t damage the photos on Amazon.

Or, instead of labeling all the pictures, you can just label the container or envelope. I really didn’t want to take the time to label each picture. Because I was organizing the printed photos by person I didn’t really feel like I needed to label them. For the vacations, I did where we went and the year we went.

Because you just need to label the container it really goes quick.

Organize The Photos Into Containers

Once you have all the photos organized and labeled then you can put them in the containers that you bought.

This is the quick and easy part of the whole process. You really just need to make sure you have enough containers for all of your different categories.

I recommend having a couple of extra containers or envelopes so you can add new groups if you need to. You don’t want to have to come up with a new system if you decide to add more pictures or a new category.

The container I use just sits on a shelf in my office. It is so easy to just to add a new picture to one of the bins when we get one. Plus, if my kiddo needs a picture for a project it is easy to find exactly what he needs.

With these easy tips to organize print photos, I was able to sit down in an afternoon and organize and label all of our photos. If you want to keep your photos in great shape and have them organized this system is a great way to do it.

Organizing and labeling those loose photos has never been easier. It’s simple to do and once you are done you will be so glad you did it.

Want some other easy organizational tips? Check out how to organize your closet on a budget.