Photographs - where do I start to organise them

[Concepta]

I have been doing a de-cluttering recently and have reached the stage where I need to sort my photographs. I started off when the children were small by making albums for both of them and putting them in as I went along, but that went by the wayside and now all I have now are packets of photos - some with no dates on them. What way do you keep yours or where do I start to sort them. I recently got a digital camera so now as well as having them in packets I have got CDs full of them too. Help!!!

You can get preety boxes to keep the packets in - whsmiths sell them for photos cd's etc. I would though date the packets as far as you can as in years to come it will be nice to know when the photos where taken, try to write on the back of the photograph in a soft pencil not an hb but again get a b pencil or softer from smiths and put which child, which year month and place if you can.

pencil works far better than any pen and will last for decades longer than a felt tip which will fade.

For digital photos you might want to get some photo-managing software - picasa is free and has a fairly good reputation, although on the occasions I've tried to use it I haven't found it intuitive.

We've got Adobe Photoshop Elements, which I get on with much better (possbily because I used it first) - it makes it a 5 mintue job to load in a new set of photos and apply tags to them, and you can organise your tags more or less how you want. Once your pictures are tagged you can find all photos tagged as "DS1" and "Dog" (or whatever combination you like) very quickly.

I'd try and work out where you want to get to and then try and see a way there - ultimately we want to get all our photos onto the computer, so we also have a film scanner and are (very slowly now) getting all our negatives scanned. With the best will in the world, we rarely look at hard-copy photos any more, so for us digital was the right solution.

Thank you for your advice. I really must get into action soon and get them sorted. I suppose I have always felt I should have them in albums, but your ideas are great. Thanks again.

I have started putting them into a scarp book type thing. I bought a large art sketch book and have gone throught the photos throwing out dodgy/rubbish ones and then puttng the rest on lovely bright paper and sticking into the sketch book.

Thats a good idea too - must get some scrapbooks too. I haven't starting yet, but I will have to stop putting this task off and just get it done. Thanks for your advice.