If you pick one New Year’s resolution, pick this one!

Do you do New Year’s resolutions? Have you maybe even thought of a resolution with regards to your photos?

Personally, I have given up on New Year’s resolution long ago because it simply doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried many years, but nothing really sticks. After a few weeks – the latest – they all go out the window. Which of course makes me feel like a failure, not a nice feeling. Can you relate?

Instead, I like to keep things real. Yes, I do want to improve in many different areas of my life. And photo management is a very important area, too. Not only professionally, as a photo organiser, but of course also for our personal photos. However, I had many plans over the years but I still struggle to keep up. Time is just flying and before I know it, another 6 months have passed and I haven’t done much with my own photos.

Decluttering and organising is of course a very popular New Year’s resolution and mind you, I have nothing against this at all. However, let’s stop and think for a minute … why do we have to declutter and organise in the first place? Yes, we have too much stuff! That’s true for photos, too. We are drowning in photos. We are overwhelmed by the amount of photos and often also the technology and the speed of its development. We are time-poor and there it is … the photo chaos is complete and out of control!

There are many ways to get the photos back under your control, decluttered and neatly organised. Today though, I would like to encourage you to focus on the very first step in the photo management process – so to speak. Yes, you guessed right, it’s about taking photos!

A warning: chances are that you will not like what I’m about to ask you! Building a new habit and changing behaviour is usually a hard thing to do. So, if we think of changing anything, let’s think about what new habit will have the biggest ripple effect.

Let’s nip photo clutter in the bud and think twice before taking a photo! 

Think about why you are taking that photo, what are you going to do with it, will it be of interest in the long run? Thinking about these things will most probably change your habit and before you know it, you will take fewer photos.

Pick this one habit and it will help you long-term 

The positive ripple effect of course is that you will

• have to spend less time managing these photos,
• need less digital storage on your devices and in the cloud, hence
• will spend less money for storage.

Another benefit might be that the overwhelm is not quite as big and chances are that you actually enjoy doing something with your photos, for example photo books. Or – if you have children – think about your legacy. They will be grateful one day if they have to deal with less photos that don’t mean anything to them.

Alternatives

Now, if you just can’t see yourself taking fewer photos, you could tweak this habit and set some rules for yourself, e.g. delete some after you have posted them to your social media account/s. Or save screenshots in Evernote rather than your camera roll because they don’t really belong to the family photos, do they?

I hope these thoughts encourage you to fight photo clutter before it even starts. 

I’d of course love to hear what you think about taking fewer photos. Is this realistic for you? If not, why not? What are you struggling with most? Please don’t be shy and ask away or share your experience with us on Facebook or email me at chantal@photosinorder.com.au.