Best Ways to Organize Old Photos

How many old photos do you have, back from the days before you could just snap them digitally on your phone? And are they tucked away in drawers here and there, and boxes in the attic, and a few in the piano stool, and some in shoe boxes with other memorabilia from that road trip you took in 1994?

Organizing and preserving your old photos can be a big project, but it’s also very rewarding. And since paper photos break down, it’s a good way to ensure you won’t lose those memories.

Options for organizing your old photos

Before you can choose the best system for your photos, you’ll need to decide a few things. How do you want to go about this?

Go completely digital

Scan and destroy all your old photos and add them to your existing digital collection. This way, you wouldn’t have to organize the physical copies of your old photos at all.

I recommend thinking this over before you decide to destroy the old photos. There’s something special about old photos in physical form, and being able to handle them and pass them around.

Go digital, but keep the paper

Scan your old photos, but keep them. In this case, you’ll also need to decide on a way to organize your physical photo storage.

This is probably the best option for most people. You still have the paper photos for as long as they can last, but you also get the convenience and security of having them stored digitally.

Digital, schmigital

Just organize the physical copies. This is obviously the simplest solution. But physical photographs still degrade over time, no matter how you store them.

Scanning ensures you’ll never completely lose the image. Plus, you can email or post your old photos online.

You can keep several boxes of photos on a single flash drive, and then you have a backup in case something happens to the physical photograph (and especially the irreplaceable negative).

Organizing Your Old Photos

Gather Your Photos

The first step is to gather all of your old photos in one place. This may involve looking around your home for shoeboxes, albums, and frames stashed in various rooms and storage areas.

Don’t forget to check attics, basements, and other less-obvious spots where photos may have accumulated over the years.

Always be gentle with these photos and handle them with care. Avoid bending, folding, or putting pressure on the fragile paper. If you come across any damaged or deteriorating photos, set them aside to address later in the process.

Sort and Categorize

This step may seem tedious, but it will help you create an organized and easily navigable photo collection.

Begin by sorting your photos into broad categories, such as:

Family events (weddings, birthdays, holidays, etc.)
Vacations and travel
Portraits and headshots
Landscapes and nature
Everyday life and milestones

Within each of these broader categories, you can further sort your photos chronologically or by individual family member or event. This will make it much easier to locate specific photos in the future.

As you sort, take note of any photos that are damaged, faded, or in need of special attention. Set these aside to be addressed later on.

Digitize Your Photos

If you’re going to digitize photos, you’ll still want to organize them digitally. Remember, the benefits of digitizing are that it:

Protects your photos from further physical damage or deterioration
Allows you to easily share and distribute your photos with family and friends
Makes it simple to create digital photo albums, slideshows, and other multimedia projects
Provides a safeguard against losing your photos in the event of a disaster, such as a fire or flood

There are several ways to digitize your photos, ranging from DIY scanning to using a professional photo scanning service. If you have a flatbed scanner at home, you can scan your photos at a high resolution (at least 300 dpi) and save them as digital files.

You can take your photos to a print shop or photo lab that offers scanning services. For damaged or delicate photos, consider using a professional photo restoration service to digitize and repair your cherished memories before they’re lost forever.

Organize Your Digital Photos

Once you’ve digitized your photo collection, it’s time to organize your digital files. Trust me, I know: not doing this up front leads to a lot of fruitless searching and browsing later on.

Start by creating a clear, logical folder structure on your computer or external hard drive. You can use the same broad categories you established earlier, such as “Family Events,” “Vacations,” and “Portraits.” Within each of these folders, create additional subfolders for specific events, locations, or time periods.

Be sure to use descriptive file names that include the date, event, and/or subject of the photo. This will make it much easier to search for and find specific photos later on.

Consider using photo management software, such as Google Photos, Apple Photos, or Adobe Lightroom. These tools offer features like facial recognition, location tagging, and automatic organization that can save you time and effort.

Preserve and Protect Your Physical Photos

If you’re keeping the physical copies of your old photos, here’s what you need to know. Photos need to be protected from sunlight, damp and other elements.

They can hold up well loose in a box or in envelopes for many years. But get one little thing wrong in their environment, and they can start to degrade.

Here are some tips for preserving your physical photos:

Store your photos in a cool, dry place, away from direct sunlight, heat, and humidity. Basements, attics, and garages are not ideal storage locations.
Use archival-quality photo sleeves, albums, or boxes to house your photos. Avoid using rubber bands, paper clips, or other metal fasteners that can damage the photos over time.
Buy some acid free binder sheets designed to hold photos and put them in binders. These pages have pockets to hold photographs and keep them protected.
Identify and label your photos with the date, location, and names of the people or events depicted. This will help preserve the context and meaning of your photos for the future.

Once you’ve decided what types of albums, boxes or binders you want to use to store your photos, you need to come up with a logical order for storing them.

Decide on a logical filing system

If you’ve only got old photos from 5 events that you’re storing, it might make sense to buy five binders and allocate one binder to each event. If you’ve got lots of photos going back years and years, you may want a tabbed system.

If you’re making your own binder, you can just add some tabs in between pages. Another option is sticky tabs: you can attach them to any page and write whatever you want on the tab. Your filing system might be by date, by type of event, by who’s in the photos, etc.

Store the negatives, too

It’s a great idea to hold onto negatives so you can get photos developed again if you want. If you’re storing photos in a binder, you can put them in an envelope and tape it inside the back cover of the album.

Wherever you decide to put them, they should be kept in a paper envelope of some sort.

Make an index

If you want to be able to find one particular photograph out of a collection of hundreds or even thousands, make an index for each album. On it, type or write a description of the photo, the page of the album it’s on, and (optionally) the number it is on that page.

If you want to be even more thorough, put a number beside each photo that correlates with the number it was on the negatives. This makes it easy to find a single photo quickly, and have it developed again from the negative.

The index is the real beauty of the system. You can include detailed descriptions of each photo so whoever inherits them will always be able to tell who was in them and where they were and what they were doing. This can be a terrific way to preserve family history as well as archive your old photos.

Enjoy and Share Your Memories

Now that your photo collection is organized and preserved, it’s time to start enjoying and sharing your cherished memories.

Consider creating digital photo albums, slideshows, or other multimedia projects to showcase your favorite photos. You can also print and frame select photos to display in your home, or create personalized gifts for family and friends.

Don’t forget to regularly revisit your photo collection and share your stories with loved ones. Organizing your photos is not only a practical task, but also an opportunity to reconnect with your family’s history and celebrate the moments that have shaped your life.