Organizing Digital Photos Today-Part 2: Declutter and Reduce Your Data Footprint
When it comes to organizing your photos in today’s digital world, I subscribe to the ‘less is more’ philosophy. Less organizational structure and fewer photos.
In Part 2 of this blog series, let’s talk about the value of decluttering your photo collection and some easy and fast ways to do it.
If you missed Part 1 of the ‘Less is More’ series, you can read that here: Organizing Digital Photos Today – Part 1: Simplify your Structure
Digital overwhelm is real
It’s no surprise to anyone that we are taking more and more photos every year. THE most common thing I hear is that people are overwhelmed with their photos. Their phones are blowing up and they have too many photos in too many places. The challenge is real. Here is why you want to do something about it…
Your data footprint
Recently, I’ve been reading a lot about the negative impact our increasingly large data footprints (volume of digital data you create and store both locally and in cloud services) have on the environment, our privacy, our finances, and our overall digital well-being.
It’s a fact that the more data you have, the more vulnerable you are to security risks, digital overwhelm, and rising storage costs, not to mention the environmental impact that is causing increased energy usage in the massive data centers storing and syncing our data. A valid reason to shrink your photo collection is to decrease your data footprint.
Have you ever cleaned out a closet and found things you thought you’d lost because it was such a mess? Photos are the same way. The meaningful and valuable ones get lost when your photo closet is too cluttered.
Here are the photos taking up THE MOST space in our collections…
1. Taking MANY photos to get the ‘perfect’ photo
I see this in EVERY client collection. Some people will even take the time to ‘favorite’ the best one, but not delete the others. Deleting the extras will save you an enormous amount of clutter.
Solution: Option #1 is BREAK THE HABIT. Take fewer photos.
Option #2 is take the 5 photos, but take the time RIGHT AWAY to select the best, and delete the rest. There is NO reason to keep the others. You won’t even remember they’re missing.
2. Screenshots or photos to remember something
We use our phone cameras today to do life. Screenshots have become a big part of this, as have photos taken while shopping or to remind us of books we want to read or recipes we want to make.
Solution: Both Androids and iPhones have Screenshot albums in their camera rolls to isolate your screenshots making it very convenient and easy to review and delete them in the cracks of your day, like when you are waiting for a doctor’s appointment or for a kid to be done with practice.
Another thing you can do is create a Reference folder in your Photos app on your phone and file these types of photos in a central location so they are both easy to find AND easy to delete when you are done with them.
3. Duplicates
Have you ever saved photos multiple times in multiple places? Is your phone backing up to multiple cloud sites (e.g. iCloud + Google Photos + Dropbox + Amazon), some that you don’t even use? Not only does this increase your digital footprint, but it makes managing your photos SO much harder than it needs to be.
Solution: STOP backing up your phone to multiple places without a PLAN. Create ONE consolidated collection and back THAT copy up INTENTIONALLY and STRATEGICALLY, instead of just creating duplicates. Best practice is to have 3 copies of your collection.
Original copy on your computer hard drive (or an external drive if you don’t have enough hard drive space).
2nd copy on an external drive. If you are a Mac user, use Time Machine.
3rd copy offsite. Either a cloud service or on an external hard drive somewhere other than your home.
If you have a lot of duplicates to clean up, you can use duplicate remover software like PhotoSweeper (Mac) or Duplicate Cleaner Pro (PC).
If you are an Apple Photos user, Apple Photos now has a built-in deduplication tool (found under Utilities) that does a great job of helping you remove duplicates from your collection.
Clearing out the clutter will give you a completely new perspective on your photos.
The bottom line in the ‘less is more’ philosophy is that leaving all of these photos in your collection reduces the positive impact of the memories and photos that mean the most.
Instead of creating joy, a cluttered photo collection creates stress. Clearing out the clutter will not only bring the joy back into your photo life, but it can inspire you to get organized, do projects, and share memories, which ultimately gives you the opportunity to touch some hearts.
Part 1 of the ‘Less is More’ series focuses on how to simplify your digital photos organizational structure…
Organizing Digital Photos Today – Part 1: Simplify your Structure
Need a step-by-step guide to getting your photos organized, The Photo Organizing Blueprint series of online courses provides you with best practices and checklists for getting organized. Learn more on the COURSES page of the Capture Your Photos website.
Holly Corbid is the Founder/Owner of Capture Your Photos, where we help you to organize, preserve, and share your lifetime of memories. Helping you touch hearts with your photos is our passion. We specialize in digital photo organization and work remotely with clients all over the country.
Looking for a DIY solution? Check out our series of online courses, The Photo Organizing Blueprint.
Find us at www.captureyourphotos.com or contact us here.