There are numerous reasons to organize your family photos ( or have a Certified Professional Photo Organizer like me do it for you! ), the list is long but a few very basic reasons are:
- An organized photo library that is consolidated and curated saves space in your house (physical photos), or on your hard drive (digital photos)
- An organized photo library makes it easy to share photos with others, make a project or a photo book
- An organized photo library provides peace of mind against hard drive or computer failure because your library will have followed best practices having back-ups both on-site and in the cloud, so your digital photos are never lost.
Here’s yet another reason to organize your photos
Even I would not have thought of this benefit to having my photos organized… confirming when the passports were last updated. Crazy you say?
Last fall we were planning a trip to Ireland to visit daughter L who was studying in Dublin for the semester. We wanted to have the whole family together so daughter G took a few days away from college, and was going to work remotely. As my husband was finalizing the documentation for entry into Ireland in this Covid world, he asked daughter G to send a photo of her passport because he needed to confirm the information. She texts the photo and my husband utters the words of dread for any International traveller… “This is an expired passport, it says it expired in 2019″… and we are two days away from departure. YIKES
An organized photo library saves the day
After quelling the dread in my stomach, the rational part of my brain takes over and I’m calculating when we last renewed their passports. “Hang on, we went to Alaska and home via Vancouver in 2019 so they had to have valid passports for that to happen…so we had to renew their passports for that…plus, daughter L was at school in Ireland so obviously she had a valid passport and that must be an old photo… right????”
So what does the Photo Organizer do? I go to my photo library and look for a photo of the new passports, and Voila! May 8, 2019 at 10:28 am our fabulous postman deposited the shiny new passports for the girls on our front porch
(Also, I love our postman because he comes really early in the day!) Because I have an organized photo library, and because I had narrowed down the timeframe to before August of 2019 (when we needed passports for a trip) AND I had remembered that the passports were here well ahead of graduation day, it took me less than 2 minutes to track down the evidence that yes, indeed, they did have new passports. Day was saved when I texted daughter G and told her #1-please delete the OLD photo of the OLD passport from your camera roll to prevent further parental heart attacks and #2-Please go and look at your ACTUAL passport and send us the information.
Photo Organizing Saves the Vacation!
Take-aways from this adventure
- Clean out your camera roll ! Practice the Daily Delete (I even wrote a blog post about it) clearing out old, outdated information
- Start today organizing your photos, even 15 minutes at a time and you will see your library start to shape up more quickly than you thought possible.
- Keep track of important documents and timelines with a spreadsheet that you review monthly (this is also helpful for info like…when is my Known Traveler application due for renewal).
- When requesting information from the college students, have them make sure the information is current and accurate!
Modern Memorykeeper Can Help!
You might never need to find a photo of the new passports to save your vacation BUT, having an organized, accessible, enjoyable photo library is something you can benefit from every. single. day. I would love to help you preserve your memories and tell your stories, it’s what I love to do! Click the “schedule time with me” button below and let’s get started organizing your photos!
Professional Photo Organizing with Modern Memorykeeper, LLC. 