A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the way we store our pictures should bring only one word to mind: organized.
That’s the word from professional home organizer Marilyn Anthony who, along with partner Susan Cohen, have rescued dozens of GTA homeowners from their mountains of mess, including their photo clutter. “Our photos are our history, our family, our life, and for most people, they’re how we define ourselves,” says Anthony of Clutter Cutters (www.wecutclutter.com). “It’s a shame to let that go.”
Below, Anthony offers her top tips for organizing and displaying both digital and hardcopy photos.
While digital cameras afford us the freedom to take far more photos without having to worry about the cost of film, according to Anthony, it has its drawbacks. “The problem with having the ability to snap away endlessly at no extra cost is that you’re putting yourself under a great deal of stress when you get home and have to sort through it,” says Anthony.
To avoid this hassle, she suggests people be more selective in the photos they take, put more effort into getting the shot right the first time, and screening and deleting photos as they go.
The sooner you label your digital photos, the better, Anthony says. “We might know what we took pictures of last week or six months ago, but I dare someone to look back several years and try and remember what’s happening in a picture,” she says.
Label photos by subject and date, or, depending on the nature and number of them, drop them in a folder featuring the name and date of the activity. For more complex storage, create a main folder and subfolders for different events occurring within the same timeframe. This will make it easier for you to review, compare and adjust your photos.
“Labelling let’s you search your files more efficiently instead of having to go through everything.”
When you combine our excessive digital camera culture, in which taking hundreds, not dozens, of photos of a given event is the norm, with e-mail, Anthony says, it makes it all too easy to violate photo sharing etiquette. “If somebody goes on a trip and takes 800 pictures, if five are outstanding, then yes, share them with your friends,” she says. “But don’t send photo albums with 500 photos. It’s overkill and it’s inconsiderate to ask people to go through such huge numbers of photos.”
If you’re eager to organize your digital photo library in a more sophisticated way, you’ll have no problem finding online resources to help you, Anthony says. She cites www.andromeda.com as a great resource to learn about photo storage/display software on the market. Alternately, www.download.com and www.tucows.com not only lists software options, but user reviews.
For Mac users, she highlights iPhoto, which stores up to 250,000 photos, offers easy and innovative photo organizing and sharing options, and even lets you create personalized hard copy calendars, greeting cards and books.
As for printed photos, the market is teeming with new and creative formats for displaying them, so perhaps the hardest part is deciding which ones you like best. Frames have evolved to encompass countless shapes, sizes and colours – there’s a frame to go with almost any home décor theme. Popular options include multi-frame wall frames and standing photo ladders with several slots, Anthony says.
Ensure you choose ones that are free of acid and PVC (polyvinyl chloride), as they cause your photos to permanently fade and discolour over time, Anthony says. In particular, she says, stay away from traditional models with single large peel-away sheets of plastic that cover photos stuck on sticky pages. “That waxy stuff for holding your photos is only good for so long, and all your pictures will eventually fall out,” she says.
Albums with plastic sheet slots for slipping in individual photos are great, she says, but try to choose ones with space for labelling.
An option that takes more work, but can reap stunning results, is an album that calls for using sticky corners to hold photos in place. “It’s the most time-consuming, but you end up with wonderfully displayed photos on nice paper you can write on…you have a beauty of display that you don’t get in the other ones,” she says.
The truly ambitious, and those with enough time on their hands, might consider scrapbooking – the wealth of ready-to-go models and supplies on the market will at least give you a head start, Anthony says.
“I once had a client with 30 photo albums, and she had no idea what was in them!” Anthony says. She recommends creating labels with dates and subjects for your albums, e.g. “Florida 2006” or “Dad’s Birthday Party April 2005”. Ensure your labels reflect the contents of albums with multiple separate events or activities. “Imagine going to a library and no books are labelled,” she says. “Label, label, label is the mantra of organizers. In terms of being able to locate something, it’s brilliant.”
