A Year Of Organized Photos - February 2016

I started this project with http://simpleasthatblog.com/

In January, I filled out the sheet she supplied that gave me a basic idea of how much I have to deal with this year.  It's a lot.  :-)  In January I also got all of our cds copied off an onto an external hard drive.  I bought one with wifi that is called a digital cloud - that way I can access it from anywhere.  Of course, throughout the month I found MORE cds in other places, so it's never actually done I don't think, but it's a huge amount of progress.

Month One - January - 

• Figure Out Where All Of My Photos Are
• Get All the Photo CDs Copied To My Cloud
• Get in the habit of cleaning out Google Photos Every Week
• Start Working On Shutterfly Albums - try for 2 a month

One thing I'd recommend personally is NOT backing up all of your cell phone pics to the mycloud.  For me at least, it's easier to back them up automatically to google photos, then I clean google photos out once a week and transfer over anything I actually want backed up for good.  I find google photos an easier format to clean out, it's more user friendly with photos, and then once they are all organized, the WD Cloud offers me better permanent storage.

What is BitRot?
Google Vice President Vint Cerf warned last year that a generation's worth of data, historical documents and photos could be lost in a pending digital dark age because of "bit rot," which happens as old programs used to view the digital documents become obsolete — think floppy discs, eight-track tapes, VHS tapes, photo negatives and slides, and even DVD formats.

I also started our Disney album - I have a scrapbook I did after our trip years ago, but I want to make a smaller digital version, that I can order copies of for each of the children.  I had hoped to get that completed, but I did not.  I did complete one other small shutterfly album.

In February I started the process of scanning in the  old print photos.  I have a pretty great, easy to use, no computer needed, scanner, that makes this pretty quick.  I wish I could find a good 12x12 option - it's on my list up there to research them, and I've been looking, but I cannot find one.  :-(  I have a lot of 12x12 scrapbook pages that I would like to scan in, to create digital albums.  But I can wait..  there's certainly enough else for me to work on, maybe by the time I get through all the 8.5x11 scrapbook pages, thumb drives, sd cards,  cds, and old print photos, there will be a better option for scanning in those 12x12 pages.  :-)

Things I am thinking about - 

Take the time to also cull your digital photos, and continue to delete even after the initial organization process. "Maybe once a month, force yourself to delete 50% to 60% of your photos. Ask yourself, will I really care about these photos in 20 years from now? You have to be disciplined about it, but you won’t regret it," Nelson said.

http://www.freep.com/story/life/family/kristen-jordan-shamus/2016/01/30/digital-scrapbooking-organizing-photos/78522472/

This is what I have been thinking a lot - I don't want my kids to inherit this mess.  There are simply TOO many photos.  

This was the second post from Simple As That:
http://simpleasthatblog.com/2013/10/tips-for-organizing-family-photos.html

January 2016  - Getting Started