8 Mistakes You’re Probably Making with Old Photos, According to a Professional Organizer

Ever since my grandpa passed away this past May, my family has been processing our grief by sharing stories and wiping the dust off the many photo albums piled up in my grandparents’ garage . At one point, their dining room table was completely covered in photos dating all the way back to the 1930s. Most of them had multiple copies, too, and when we talked about how to best preserve and store them, I immediately thought of Amanda Titchenal, the organizing pro behind full-service organizing firm Well Organized .

“When you look at photos, it brings up all sorts of memories, and it can be nostalgic, good, or bad,” Titchenal says. “It’s a visual memory, so it’s always going to be present.”

While it’s important to honor those emotions, and sometimes fun to take a quick trip down memory lane, Titchenal and her team encourage their clients to “keep their eye on the prize.”

“Your ultimate goal is to get these photos organized, so you can go back through and enjoy them,” she says. “Be realistic about what you’re holding onto, and know that it’s OK to let them go.”

Such a task feels pretty daunting, and there are a few mistakes you can make in both the preparation and process. Below, advice on what to avoid during your next photo organizing project, complete with Titchenal’s top tips.

Sarandy Westfall/Unsplash

You Don’t Have Time

We all lead busy lives, which is why those photo boxes and albums are collecting dust in cabinets or drawers. Setting aside chunks of time—Titchenal says even an hour or two—can get you started. One important thing to remember: Create a labeling system early on. “Make sure they’re labeled in some form, so that if you do have to set aside the project, you can come back and pick up where you left off,” she says.

Your Photos Are All Over Your Home

Chances are, some photos are in a guest room closet , others are piled into a living room cabinet, and there might be a few miscellaneous boxes of memorabilia in your garage. Prior to tackling this project, you want to centralize all of your photos.

“Get all of your photos from every nook and cranny into one area, and then try to eliminate as much of that ‘trash’ from the photos as you can,” Titchenal says. “Empty bags, boxes, or broken envelopes. A lot of times, the volume isn’t even photos, it’s other stuff mixed in.”

You Have Tons of Duplicates

Speaking of excess, you probably have a few copies of the same (if not, similar) photos stowed away.

“Duplicates and triplicates and quadruplicates were a big thing when people would get film developed,” Titchenal says. “Every time, you would check the box, ‘Duplicate’ and you could have 20 pictures of a tree that you accidentally took. Weeding out all those bad pictures is usually a quick way to reduce the number of photos, so you have a manageable amount to work with.”

This “trash” may also include negatives, old film canisters, and packaging of any kind.

Another consideration? Tossing out your outdated family portraits. If they’re no longer your style and you have a smaller format of the same image, Titchenal recommends shredding pictures—that way, they’re not floating around in the trash somewhere.

Josh Hild/Unsplash

Your Photos Are in Their Original Frames

To better preserve your images, and get rid of bulkier storage items, take photos you’re not displaying out of their frames.

“People have so many framed photos and they’re just taking up so much space,” Titchenal says. “If you think about how thick a frame can be versus a photo, that’s the thickness of 100 photos. When things are in their frames, they can also get damaged if they’re stuck to the glass.”

You Haven’t Organized Them in Years (or Ever)

If you’re like my family, you need to create a full system to categorize all of the photos you’ve decided to hold onto. Titchenal typically recommends “macro” and “micro” categorizing. Macro is the bigger picture, like the size of a photo, person, holiday, or year. From there, you have the option to go more granular, so you could take all of the holiday photos and then separate them by Christmas , Easter , birthdays, and so on.

“It just depends on the individual, and how detailed they want to be with their photos,” Titchenal says. “The categories can be kind of endless, so that’s why most people usually stick with the broader categories.”

Courtesy of Amazon

Mr. Pen Poster Tube, $19

You Don’t Have a Storage System

Titchenal says that albums are becoming a thing of the past, and she and her team prefer archival photo boxes or large plastic boxes. These storage containers have dividers and labels included or added, and you can prepare different sized containers for larger or smaller photos. If you have larger prints (anything 11 x 14 inches or bigger), Titchenal suggests rolling them up and placing them in photo-safe tubes .

Courtesy of Amazon

Lifewit Photo Storage, $30

Here are some of Titchenal’s product recommendations:

• Lifewit Photo Storage Box 4×6 Photo Case
• University Products Large Archival Photo Storage
• Itoya Profolio Photo Album & Art Portfolios

Courtesy of The Container Store

The Container Store University Products Large Archival Photo Storage, $28

Courtesy of Amazon

The Container Store Itoya Profolio Photo Album & Art Portfolios, $16

You Haven’t Digitized Your Photos

A surefire way to organize your photos? Take them into the digital world. Digitizing your photos can allow you to save a lot of space and keep your photos in one place. It does, however, require a meticulous categorization process beforehand.

“The way you hand them in is the way you receive them back,” Titchenal says. “So it’s best to organize them before you digitize them, and that’s why going through them all is important. But then, once they’re digitized, you can essentially eliminate the hard copies from your life, if you want.”

You’re Struggling to Organize Photos in Real Time

Titchenal has an organizing hack for people (parents, in particular), who are frequently collecting photos. Once you’ve organized all of your old photos, you may want to invest in some albums for your kids’ sport and school photos.

“I have one album that I keep for each of my kids,” she says. “They send you, like, 20 wallets and the whole package together, and I keep everything in one tidy album. My son just graduated from eighth grade, and I have all his pictures from the hospital professional photos all the way to graduation in one album.”