Is leafing through photo albums, reminiscing about smiling faces and precious memories a thing of the past in your household?  Do you now have digital photos scattered on your tablet, mobile phone, desktop etc.?  Instead of boxes and bookshelves stuffed and overflowing with pictures, we now have digital clutter but what we know is clutter can be harmful to our overall wellbeing, no matter what form.
Spring is in the air and many of us have begun our spring clean-up, so let’s not forget to de-clutter our computer as part of an ultimate spring cleaning. As overwhelming as this task may seem, “reorganizing” your digital photos may be easier than you think.
So, on the next rainy afternoon, brew some coffee or tea and spend the afternoon leafing through and organizing your digital albums keeping these simple steps in mind.

• Gather all zip disks, hard drives, memory cards, and any other device you have pictures stored. Transfer everything to one drive, and make that your starting point.
• Photos are irreplaceable and should be stored in more than one place, so back up to an external hard drive as well as a cloud service.
•  Pull up all picture files, start looking through them, and decide how you would like them organized. Arranging by year is always good, and then focus on events or particular dates.
• If this seems overwhelming to you, there are many photo organizers available for purchase and/or free download. Do a little research and find the one that’s right for you. Many of our devices come with organizers such as iPhoto and Windows Live Photo Gallery.
• Go through your emails and social media sites, and download any pictures you would like to keep. It’s easy to forget about those, but detecting the ones that are valuable will be worth your time and energy.
•  Print a few pictures, and put them in frames just for old time’s sake.

We know that when we de-clutter our lives we improve our mental wellbeing and levels of happiness; learning to let go of things, and organize the rest is a life skill that can go beyond clearing out your digital closet. Just don’t forget to stop and reminisce some of those good memories while you’re cleaning and “reorganizing”!

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