Photos - don't know where to start!

[Supersesame]

I have over a thousand photos, mostly of my pfb who is now 2.
Ive got some on memory sticks, some on Cds, on my phone, others in dropbox. I've tried synching these all to Dropbox and reached the max limit and got frustrated, screamed and gave up.
I seem to have duplicated photos too. On my phone I have two of lots of them for some reason.
Can you tell me what to do to sort my mess out!? The task is overwhelming me.
Ideally, I would like to put them all in one place, th en maybe go though them and put a few favourites in their own folder and get them printed to put on some bare walls.
There's more on my camera which I want to get off so I can use my now dusty camera at an event next week.
I don't mind spending a couple of hours on this if I can get it right.
Where to start??

I think you start with 2 Gigabytes free on Dropbox, assuming you've not paid for extra nor got any referrals?
If your pics are 10MP each, ish, that'd be roughly 400 pictures worth of room (according to google anyway, I've not 'done the math').

I decided to keep ALL my photos on an external hard drive,and I back them up to Google Drive (like Dropbox, but it gives me more free storage and I find to easy to use).

I'll be honest, sorting it out did my head in - but I am very very very messy, and I had pics all over the shop, in lots of folders and on multiple devices. So I did little and often, getting rid of disks first.

Thanks Hazel, how big is the free limit on Google Drive?
Dropbox at 400 photos sounds about right.
Also, if I put all my photos on my computer to start with, is there any sort of program that would run theough them and delete the duplicates.
About to make some tea and tackle this!

It's amazing how 'virtual' untidyness gets to you? this type of thing annoys me too

I have an external hard drive for my photos plus a second one as a back up as a computer tech once told me that anyone who only backs up once doesn't really mind that much if they lose them!
What I do is to have a folder for each year.
Every time we've been somewhere I've taken a lot of pictures, I view them on the computer, edit and then save them all onto the hard drive that is always plugged into the laptop.
Once or twice a year I back that folder up into the second hard drive.
I delete the pictures off the card in the camera once I've backed them up and also gather the photos off my phone periodically and save them too.
Once you've set up the hard drive it really doesn't take long as I like to view the pics on the laptop anyway for a better picture.
The duplicates thing takes a bit of sorting, get them on your laptop if you have one, then sit in front of the telly for a couple of evenings getting them all sorted.
I have many thousands of photos as I don't edit ruthlessly enough!

I spent some time organising mine, folders by Year and then Month taken. Was a PITA but worth it. I have an external hard drive and Google Drive, paying the extra for more storage. My brother does the same, his PC burnt out and was able to retrieve all of it.

I've also put DD's photos onto a DVD for the GP's and GGP's took forever as we have lots and lots. But they don't have PC's and they can view in a slideshow on their tv.