Get Organized Pittsburgh

When I meet client and they show me their messy spaces they often punctuate that tour with “and when we get all this done, I can finally do my photos”. People are often paralyzed when they feel a task is really important. This problem only got worse when scrap booking came into fashion. People are able to invest in all these possibilities but ultimately get overwhelmed because they made it too hard! Now there are so many ways to do it “wrong”! This “all or nothing” thinking is an attribute of disorganized people and it really comes into play with photos.

What to do? DECIDE! Decide on the materials you are going to use and get started with what is current. I did the research and tried the products and here is my “professional opinion” for the average Joe who just wants to protect and organize their photos. (This is not scrap booking).

I use the 12 by 12 Pioneer Photo Albums with the Easy Top Load Pages with Black pages.
The 12 by 12 size holds more pictures per page and I like to arrange photos on the page and glue them in. I do crop them but I try to crop using similar dimensions. I will crop a 4 x 6 horizontal picture to be 4 x 4 so it fits in a layout with a vertical 4 x 6 picture. If you use consistent cropping size, more pictures fit uniformly on the page. I do not use many shapes like hearts because they look dates FAST and it is hard t use the photo any other way. The only shape cutting I will do is an occasional circle. I like the way the pictures look on the black paper and they really pop when you put them in the sleeve. The sleeve makes view easy because photo corners are not lifting where the page bends and smeared glue want make pages stick together. I use a photo safe glue stick to quickly glue them in place.
I use basic photo boxes from Exposures and the Photo Envelopes from Light Impressions.
I organized my photos chronologically as best I could and kept aside a “best of” envelope for each very important person in my family. I marked on the front of each envelope the rough dates and theme/event. Then I marked some of the “star” photos so that they would be easy to retrieve later. If there was a photo where a very important person was the focus I would put it in their best of envelope.

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