The Best Tool for Organizing Digital Photos

A relative shared a link via Facebook, and it led me to this amazing blog called Small Notebook. It’s written by a lady named Rachel whose purpose is to help people understand that “you don’t need to buy more storage containers to get organized.” That’s life-hacking. I quickly found that she’d posted on something I’ve been saying for a long time. And that is there is an essential tool for organizing digital photos that is: simple, free, and you already have it: “It’s your delete button.”

So I delete the ones that need it. It’s a lot more fun to look at photos on a computer once you’ve weeded out the bad ones, and it’s also nicer when you’ve deleted the ones that look identical.

Then goes on to tell how she does it personally:

For several months I’ve had a goal to delete 40 photos every day. Some weeks I do this, and some weeks I’ve let it go, but it usually takes me no more than ten minutes. It’s been an easy way to keep my photos more or less organized when I don’t have time to do anything more. I can focus on a small, measurable goal for the day, instead of the overall big project of “organizing the photos.”

Plus it makes it so much more enjoyable when you’re showing somebody pictures of your trip or some event. You don’t have to hurriedly skip through all the out-of-focus, lame, and dumb ones. And it saves tons of time when you want to make a video slide-show. There’s no need to select which ones, use them all, because you only have the very best left.

Make sure to check out the best of Small Notebook for more great ideas like this one. Thanks to Jessica for sharing Rachel’s post on “Loosening the Grip of ‘More Stuff’“!

What tricks do you use to organize your digital photos and other documents?