Decluttering and organising photos is one of those typical tasks that people postpone to ‘someday’. When is ‘someday’ though? When the kids will have moved out? When you retire? When you take long service leave? 

Fact is …  ‘someday’ might be too late! Unexpected things happen to people all the time and suddenly, it is too late. I experienced this personally when my dad collapsed one day, ended up in hospital and passed away four weeks later. Hence, all those things that he had saved to do for ‘one day when I’m retired’ sadly never happened.

I don’t want to be all doom and gloom here; I’m simply stating possibilities. When you read this article, chances are that you have procrastinated about your photo projects for a while (check out this guide here if you want to learn how to stop procrastinating about your photos!).  Don’t feel bad about this, please. It is not my aim to make you feel guilty. Neither is it my intention to tell you to ‘just do it’. I know full well that these projects take time and that it is much easier if you feel like you are in the right frame of mind to tackle them.

What I would like to do though is to encourage you to do the following tasks to make sure that your photos are still there once you are ready to dive in. It shouldn’t take long.

1. Plan

In your mind, you might already have a rough idea about when you want to deal with your photo collection. It doesn’t matter when that is. I invite you to write it down though: take a piece of paper and brainstorm some ideas for projects and goals. Basically, think about your vision and write down a date. If that date is 15 years from now, it doesn’t matter. Just bring it down to paper and out of your head.

This will allow you to park the project until then and free up some mind space. Just make sure that you keep that note in a place you are not going to lose it. For example, at the back of your paper diary or even put a reminder in your digital calendar.

2. Share where your photos are

Again, this doesn’t take long. You want to write down where your physical and digital photos are and any login details that are needed to access them.

For example, if you keep your digital photo hub (more about photo hubs here) on your PC, make sure to write down the login password if you need one to start your computer. The same goes if you use any cloud services in connection with your photos, e.g. a Dropbox account. Make sure that the username and password are noted in a safe place but accessible to a trusted person in case something happens to you.

An extra tip: It has become almost impossible to know passwords by heart since companies want you to include numbers, capital letters, symbols etc and ask for regular changes. If you want to keep it all as easy and as current as possible, use a password manager such as Dashlane or Lastpass (no affiliation) and simply share the master password with a trusted person. If anything should happen to you, they will feel sad and terrible. However, not having to worry about all those details on top of it will make a difference to them.

If you prefer pen and paper, just be careful and don’t let those things lie around. Be very mindful with whom you are sharing access details. You could even leave that note with your will. Or maybe you have one of those binders or boxes containing all your important documents. This is also a good place to add these access details.

That’s all for now. If you can do these three things, you will have peace of mind for now and your photos will be safe and ready for you when you are.

If you would like some further assistance, please don’t be shy and book your 30-minute free call now!