You take a million pictures of your kids but what should you do with them after they are taken? Here is what I do to try and keep some order in all my digital image files.
1. At the end of the day when you are laying on the couch go through your images from that day and pick your favorites. On the iPhone it is easy to just add a heart to your favorite ones. You could also delete any you don’t like if that is easier for you.
2. Transfer your photos to the computer at the end of every month and before and after big trips. This will help you with organization see step 3. For transferring, I use the app PhotoSync, since it allows me to sync specific folders to my computer. It also keeps track of what you have already transferred so you don’t have to worry about duplicates.
3. Organize the pictures in a folder system. I have a folder for every year since I had a digital camera so 2003 – 2019. Inside each of these folders are folders for special events like parties, birthdays, holidays, trips and then the day to day pictures get put in a folder for a month.
4. Print your images. I occasionally copy pictures into a “to be printed” folder. Then when it comes time to get some images printed I just take those images. I get around to printing pictures about 3 times a year. I evaluated several printing services in Munich and you can see that review here. (https://abbie-louise-photography.com/2018/03/31/getting-photos-printed-in-munich-germany/) I think yearly family photobooks are great. You can sit down once a year in January and put everything together from the past year. Or when you do your monthly transfer put together pages for that month.
5. Back up your images. I have several different ways our images are backed up. First, I pay $1 a month for more iCloud storage so that I have my iPhone pictures there. There are many options for android phones with similar prices (Amazon Drive, Google Drive, Drop box, etc.) Then we back up the computer regularly with external hard drive. Lastly, we have a secure cloud backup service that scans our computer non-stop to back up anything new.
Hope that helps happy organizing!