Hi to everyone,
I have a dilemma that's driving me crazy. Can anyone provide me with some insight on how you handle organizing the pictures you store until you get around to scrapbooking them?
Here's what I've done. I have about 5 photo boxes full of pictures that I've already sorted into categories like those with just me, my family, my dh's family, school, work, trips & events, friends, etc. But I've decided to further organize them to see what I really have. So I started going through "freinds" and sorted them into each set of friends. But then I run into, well, these friends were visited during a particular trip, so do I put them into my "trips" category so that they stay together (since there's also scenery pictures of that trip) and I can scrap the trip? Or I have family photos with just me, me and different grandparents, group photos involving several different families, me and family on a trip, me and friends on a trip with my family, etc.
I've thought about a few options:
1) Keep it the way it is and just hope I don't miss pictures when I need them because of them being in another category (this has happened once already). 2) Write a ton of stickies somehow on those I want to remember to check other categories before scrapping. Like file a set of friends' photos in their category but place a note in "trips" to cross-reference "friends" for those that were taken during a trip to see them. (or vice versa) 3) Purchase a photo scanner and use some software to categorize them all with keywords so that I can do a simple search and come up with every person involved in the photo and the location (like the trip). This would eliminate missing anything but I guess I'd have to number every photo for cross-reference. The money isn't as much of a problem as not knowing which products would work best.I ran into this problem a year ago when I started sorting them and just decided that throwing them together into broad categories was best for then, but now my drive for perfection is driving me crazy! This probably sounds so silly and I'd never worry about it if I only had ONE box of photos...
What would you all do??? Is anyone as anal-retentive as me (doubtful!) who's found a system they're really happy with that keeps their sanity intact? ANY help would be so greatly appreciated!!!
THANK YOU!