Organize me...

So I feel like I am pretty organized but sometimes I fall off the wagon. Well this weekend I tacked the dragon and started getting my photos ready to print. I started with 2013. I should have started with 2012 cause that is where I left off but I was not really feeling it. I printed off 900 photos! Wow I am so excited though because now I can start regularly scrapbooking again. I mean I have scrapbooked a lot in the past year but I have been all over the place. I have photos here and then from 2013, 2014, and 2015 but I usually scrapbook chronologically so it will be nice to have a years worth to work on.

I mentioned that I printed them out on Facebook and that started a whole conversation about how I organize my stuff so I thought I would do a blog post about it.

First I try to upload my photos on a regular basis but that almost never happens so the first thing that usually I need to do is take all of my photos from the upload file that says for example 1/12/15 and sort by month.  I will them make a folder for the year so lets to 2014 I then add 12 new folders and call them 01 January, 02, February, 03 March. I do this because if I just did 1,2 3, it would sort it like 1, 10, 11, 2, 3.

Once my folders are named I open the upload folder (1/12/15) in a new window and have them sort of side by side. I then drag all of the January into the January folder. I do this for each month. Something new I just did this past weekend was add a print folder to each year. We will get to that in a moment. This one is still empty because I have not gotten to organize 2014 yet really.

After I get them into folders I try to then put sub folders in each month. Now I will be honest I have not done that in a long time. Even this past weekend when I did 2013 I just opened the main January folder and decided what to print. However, my life is easier if I look through the photos and get a general feel of what we did that month and then toss photos into each folder. From there I can decide what to print and copy (I copy so that I don't lose photos in a folder) into the print folder. I just put the whole year in there. 

I also make a outline of what I want to scrapbook on the computer or by hand. That way as I am off to a crop or working in my studio I have an idea of what I have coming up scrapbook wise.

Lastly I print out my photos and organize them in little file boxes. I again separate them out by month or event and then as I scrap them I just check them off. I have not been a good scrapper since 2011 which is why I don't have something more current. However you can see that I don't always scrap everything. If I don't use the photos I just put them along with the index card at the back of the file box until the end of the year. After that I put them in a photo box and store them in the closet. My kids can use these photos to scrapbook or sometimes I make gifts with them.

Well that is that. I know it sounds like a lot of work but it makes it easy to grab and go. How do you organize your photos? Do you have a similar system or something else. I am always looking for ways to find tune things.