The Great Photo Purge Challenge: Week 2 Update & Tips

Do you have tons of digital pictures on your computer? Then join the Great Photo Purge Challenge this month! For more on how this challenge works and why it's important, check out the introductory post here.

My progress this week

Here's a new shot of where I stand this week:

I'm down to 24,497 pictures, which is a total of 311 pictures deleted this week. Better than my goal of 250, but much less than the 752 from last week.

Here's how it breaks down by year.

What kinds of pictures I deleted

I stuck with 2012 this week. I'd planned to delete more organizing project pictures that didn't make it into blog posts. But being without power one night and without internet most of last week, kind of put a damper on that because I couldn't access my blog posts to see which pictures I used.

So I turned to family pictures instead. I went through groups of pictures from special events and outings with the kids and chose to keep the best ones and delete ALL the rest.

Lessons learned this week

Like I shared last week, I get a little trigger happy with my camera sometimes, and I take way too many pictures.... just in case :) I end up with lots of pictures of more or less the same pose. Sometimes there's slightly different (and cute!) expressions on the kids' faces, but they are essentially the same picture.

I pretty much figured if I wouldn't pay to print all the pictures, then why should I keep them. I was pretty ruthless. But now if I decide to print some pictures of vacations or birthdays or day trips, I only have to choose from a few special ones, rather than all the ones I had before.

Just as with organizing projects for the blog, I need to purge my family pictures as I upload them. Or at least once a month. That way they won't accumulate and I won't have to do this large a purge ever again :)

Steps to Organize Your Digital Photos {A few more in coming weeks}

Step One: Combine your photos
Step Two: Purge your photos

These two steps were covered last week. You can read more about them here. Now for this week's step:

Step Three: Organize your photos

If you haven't finished purging your photos (like me!) I'd recommend doing that first. It's like when you're organizing a space in your house. You need to purge first, so you only need to organize what you're keeping. In this case, there's no sense organizing photos you're not going to keep!

Once you have decluttered all your blurry, duplicate, and unnecessary photos, you're ready to organize the ones you're keeping.

There are lots of ways to do this. Chronologically and by event are two of the most common. See the links below for examples of several different ways of organizing your pictures on your computer.

You should choose whatever method makes the most sense to you, and that fits best with how you will most often search for your photos on your computer.

If you have a great mind for dates, then chronologically may work well for you. If you are better with people or places, then organizing by event may be easier for you.

Digital Photo Organizing Tips

Each week I will share tips I've found online to help you purge and organize your digital pictures. Here are this week's tips:

DaNita from Delightful Order shows how she organizes her photos by year, month, and then event within each month. She also shows her Photo Journal Log where she documents the events she photographed.

Delightful Order

Erin from Sunny Side Up shares how she organizes her photos for her blog, as well as family photos she wants to keep but that don't make it into blog posts.

Sunny Side Up

Lastly, here's a great Pinterest board I found with tons of tips for organizing photos. Here's the link: Photo Organizing and Tips

Your turn!

You can join in the challenge by leaving a comment here, or on Facebook or Google+! You can set whatever goal you want, based on your available time. Just break the challenge down into manageable chunks so it's less overwhelming. Even if it takes you months, every little bit helps! Let me know how you're doing each week. We'll all encourage each other along the way.

If you have a system for keeping your digital photos organized and under control, please share your tips with us!

Remember, the point of this challenge is not to get rid of all our pictures. The goal is to take better care of our special pictures (by being able to find them faster, back them up quicker, and maybe even add tags). And the best way to accomplish this is to get rid of all the pictures that we don't need or want.

Adele from Arrange My Place is co-hosting this challenge with me so don't forget to check out her progress on her Facebook page.

Here are all the posts in the series.

How do you organize your digital photos? Please comment if you're joining the challenge or share tips if you've got this digital pictures thing under control!

Happy organizing!