30 Days to Clean: 5 Years of Photos

My oldest just started Kindergarten, and I haven't organized my photos into an album since before she was born! I started scrapbooking in High School and had been a very avid scrapbooker. My sister used to be a creative memories consultant, and I have attended many scrapbooking classes, and seminars over the years. I know that gave me an advantage.

Some of the basic tips I remembered:
*Put all of your photos in one place and get them in order. Any method of categorizing is fine, just choose what works best for you. I like to go chronologically. You could organize by subject matter, vacations, summer, winter, school etc. (I found photos on my blog, facebook, phone, hard drive, jump drive, CD's, several digital cameras, and SD cards.)
*You don't have to use every photo. Use only the best to tell the story. I couldn't bring myself to delete all the unused photos so I made a jump drive for each year of every photo I could find.
* Zoom in to your subject. Crop out uninteresting or distracting objects. Keep the main thing, the main thing!
*Contrasting colors look good together. (Contrasting colors are opposites on the color wheel Red/Green, Orange/Blue, Purple/Yellow)
*Start today and work backwards. Starting 18 years ago and trying to work forward, you will become overwhelmed and most likely not finish. (I started with 2011, then 2010, then 2009, and so on.)

Just one of the many fabulous images I didn't
use, but couldn't bring myself to delete.
I guess I am not completely over my
 hoarding problem yet!

The other advantage I had, was that all of my photos were already in digital format! This was by far my biggest advantage. I uploaded photos into 5 separate albums on my Shutterfly account. I then spent most of my free time for 2 weeks to create and order 5 albums.

My final cost was almost $200. That seems like a lot until you start breaking it down.
$40 an album/year (my old albums before photos, embellishments, adhesive, etc cost that.)
Less than $.50 a photo (I used over 200 per album, of various sizes)

I opted for the automatic fill option. Each of my books started at over $110 each. By editing out the photos I didn't want, making some pages collages, and deleting the now empty pages I was able to drop that price significantly. A running tally of your current cost is in the upper left had corner of the screen, so you can make real time/money decisions. I also used coupon codes for free shipping and additional % off my order.

My favorite thing though is once the book is made, it is saved onto your Shutterfly account, and you can reorder it if anything should happen. Like your kids fighting over it the day it arrives, and ripping a page in your book. Grrrr...

I added a banner at the bottom. Just click the link and use the code. You will recieve an additional 15% off your order.