DIY Network

Organizing Photos Learn how to take care of your photos. From "Home Made Easy" episode DHME-124

Guest organizing expert Jessica Sabat joins host Stephanie Lydecker and outlines the different ways you can take care of your print and digital photos.

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	Jessica demonstrates great ways to organize and take care of your photographs.
	Figure A

Organizing Photos

• Today more and more photos are being taken with digital cameras. Use your computer to organize the photos by creating different folders to contain the photos. First, you need to rename your photos, delete the bad ones, create a master folder for digital images, create labeled subfolders, and back up your photos on a CD.

• The first step when it comes to organizing your photos is to divide them into categories for different times in your life like college, your wedding, your family, your children or even a favorite pet.

• Sort the photos and put them into separate boxes like shoe boxes or containers. Photos shouldn't stay in shoe boxes for very long because they become acidic over time, but acid-free envelopes will preserve them.

• You should also label your photos when you sort them. The best way to label them is by the name of the subject or person, the date, the location and anything you might want to remember down the road. You can label the back of the pictures with an acid-free, photo-safe pencil or pen—which are available at most craft and art supply stores. Do not use a ball point pen! If you don't want to touch the photos, label on the outside of the box.

• Once you have really seen all the wonderful pictures you're keeping it won't hurt so much to discard photos that you don't care for.

• Photo albums are a great way to store your photos, once they are organized, because they make viewing your photos easier than if they are in boxes. And, albums are an easier way to show others your pictures. They are protected and won't get fingerprints on them and you can also include mementos in them.

• The first thing to do is to arrange all the photos that you want to include in the album in some sort of order. Once you know how many albums you want to create to hold your now organized photos, make sure you buy enough pages so you can easily add to your albums if you want to add more pictures later on.

• Albums now come in all sizes and shapes, so you might want to have albums that are all in a similar style, or go with ones that reflect the theme. You might also want to consider a separate album for organizing your negatives. An art book is great to use as an album because the white paper serves as a mat for the photos. Just mount the photos using photo corners (figure A).

• Make sure to label your albums so you know what is in each one.

GUESTS :

Jessica Sabat
Professional Organizer
Website: www.optimumorganizing.com