Laura Vegas

i’ve been thinking a lot about photo storage lately. not really how to store them … just coming up with a system for organizing them i guess. i have tons of pictures. i have tons of pictures that i’m never going to scrap. i have tons of pictures that i want to scrap. and i have tons of pictures on my hard drive that need to be somewhere. but my anal self is having a hard time getting a good system planned in my head.

if you look back at my scrapbook albums from my first 8 year of scrapbooking … i’d say almost 90% of my pictures are on my scrapbook pages. now the last 3 years are a little different. i do have some pictures that i’ve never got around to scrapping. and i’m realizing that i don’t have to scrap every photo i’ve ever taken. but i still feel the need to put these pictures somewhere.

a few months ago i went through all the older pictures i had in my photo boxes (with the exception of this years) … and i sorted out any pictures that i didn’t think i’d scrap. everyday pictures without a story. all the extra event pictures that didn’t make the main page. and i had picked up some regular photo albums … the ones where you just slide your pictures in, 3 on a page. i figured i could just add these photos in there … and that could be the spot for all those misc pictures. if i ever want to scrap them … i can pull them out and it’s not a big deal. sure … it bugged me that maybe 2 of the pictures on a page were going one direction and one pictures was going the opposite way. lol! but i just slid them all in and tried not to be too anal about it.

so now i’m left with a small assortment of pictures that i really do want to scrap. thing is that now i’m so addicted to printing my own photos my way … borders and all different sizes. so do i really need all those 4×6 prints? and what about when i do our little "photo shoots" … and i have about 14 different poses of alyssa and 14 different poses of sarah? i’m certainly not going to scrap all 14. but what if i scrap 4 of each of the girls … do i really need to have 10 of each in the other regular album? they’re not dud pictures … they’re good pictures. so i really do feel like i need to have all the pictures in an album … be in a regular album or a scrapbook album.

i think i’m doing better on the daycare kids pictures than on our family’s pictures. lol! i’ve really changed my thinking on the daycare kids. for instance … i had taken some pictures of ady one day in her booster seat while she was eating lunch. i had about 5 cute pictures. but then again … way too much color between the booster seat (does anyone know where to get a cute olive green or deep red booster seat that would match my kitchen better then the primary red/blue/yellow one i have now. lol!), the crazy multi-colored bib (i can never find nice, big, pretty bibs), her bright sippy cup, and all the food on the tray. so i honestly don’t think i’ll ever scrap them … and i don’t know that i really need to scrap them … although i could totally scrap about her throwing all her food on the floor when she doesn’t want it. lol! but do i need 5 pictures in the regular photo album? no i don’t. so i picked just one and ordered it … although i did order the others for her mom.

but you see where i’m going with this? or maybe not … maybe this thinking out loud thing doesn’t make much sense. lol! i just feel like i have pictures coming out of every corner i turn. i want them organized and stored in appropiate places. but i want it to have a system to it … so that it makes sense. and i don’t want it to be something that i turn around and decide isn’t good a few months from now. so it needs to be thought out.

i know i’ll come up with something. i was the same way with my digital images off my camera. took me quite a while to figure out a good organizational method for sorting, editing, and all that. but i have a system … and it has been working now for about 6 months. i know where to put my images … i know where to find them … and i know where to put them when i’m done editing. just ask me for any digital image and i can totally find it for you within minutes. lol!

but if you have any great ideas on this … i’d love to hear them. please share!