Ah, the holidays. That wonderful time of the year when we carry our cameras to every gathering. Then we return home to load them onto our computer so the card is empty and we can take more pictures at the next event.

Then we never look at them again!

Do you do this? I hope not. I’ll admit, though, that there are many pictures living in my computer that have not seen the light of day since we took them. Today is the day to do some weeding out. Here’s what I got done in twenty minutes:

  • Look at all of the photos downloaded from your phone (if you have any). Create actual names for these folders rather than leaving them as the date they were downloaded (for example 1-4-2011).
  • Delete duplicate folders with different names! How in the world does this even happen? I have no idea.
  • Delete blurry pictures.
  • Remember to empty the trash on your hard drive after you’ve deleted all these photos (or you won’t gain any free space on your computer).

I’ve actually done this rather regularly the past several months so you may be able to get more accomplished than I could during your twenty minutes. Especially if you’ve never taken any time to organize your digital photos before now.

I’m curious. How do you organize photos on your computer? Do you just store them in a folder called “Pictures” or do you use Picassa or some other software to store and edit them? Or do you use Flickr, Picassa, or some other web-based storage system?

Whatever system you’re using, set yourself a timer today and add some order to your photo collection. Please let me know how it goes!

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PSS – Find me on Twitter here – Gather Arts Organizing and Jen Crutchfield