PJ's Life and Stuff: May 2011

When most of us decide to start scrap booking, our first hurdle is usually a huge stack of photos. No matter the subject or the number of photos, it is typically a large pile. Organization of these photos is the key. I will site an example from my past .

After my grandmother passed away, my Aunt Shirley took possession of 93 years of photographs that spanned at least 5 generations. My Aunt wanted to divide the pictures between herself, my mother and my Aunt Lucy. She gave it the good ole college try and ended up with 3 big overwhelming piles of pictures instead of one. My Mom called me to help out. I purchased some CM Photo Sorting Boxes and instructed everyone to bring a shoe box and a package of index cards. I also brought along 3 of David's shoe boxes. He wears a size 15 so, his shoe boxes are pretty big.

I decide the pictures would be sorted by the following categories: Wife/Husband, Child #1, Child #2, Child #3. Then any grand kids, great grand kids would be sorted under their Parent "child". There was also another shoe box for things like group shots, family friends or professional shots. We used the shoe boxes to sort the photos and the index cards as tab dividers with subjects written on the cards. The pictures were divided into in the shoe boxes. Once all the dups or "throw away" pictures were sorted out, the shoe boxes were then sorted in to the Large CM Photo Storage boxes for long term/dark storage. At the end of the weekend each "sister" had organized box of pictures to take home.

Using my story as an example, take your pile of pictures and sort them. Make large over all themes and then sort down into more detail. This works just as well digitally on your computer. If you chose to sort electronically, make large general subject folders, sort pictures into general folders. Then inside each general folder sort pictures into smaller more detailed groups. It has to make sense to you, that is what matters. Not everyone feels the need to sort chronologically. Sort by vacation, theme, subject, holiday.

During your first big sort of pictures, do not worry about page layouts. If you find yourself in a creative mode and ideas are coming to you, write them down on a legal pad.