Virtual House Cleaning

I have a lot of pictures that I have stored online.

I'd like to tell you that I organized them all when they were uploaded.  Organized by year and activity, I've been able to access all of the photos at need whenever the fancy strikes me.  Any time I go to work on an album, or to print pictures, I've been able to find the pictures with minimum effort, and complete my projects quickly and easily.

That would be a lie.

I have a jumble of pictures online that I have to shuffle through every single time I attempt to do anything.  It can take me hours to track down a handful of pictures. 

Uploaded willy-nilly over the years, the biggest culprit appears to be pictures I have uploaded from the cell phone.  I'm never certain which folder those pictures are going to land in.  You'd think they'd land in the album labeled "cell phone".  Not so.  They fall into everything from girl scout pictures to "cat".  There appears to be no rhyme or reason for the pattern in which they upload.  Okay, I admit, there is one common factor - me and my slip shod methods when I go to upload photos.

I've had some time on my hands recently, so I've been organizing the photos.  I began by making folders for every year.  As I open the messy miscellaneous folders, I add an album under the appropriate year, and then move the pictures over to that album.  Thankfully, the online software is intuitive and easy to use.

Photos that I thought would take me a year or more to organize are now organized.

Ten years worth of photos, organized by year and activity.  (Like I said, I've had some time on my hands.)

Looking back through the old photos has been wonderful.  I've enjoyed looking back over what we've done for the last 10 years.  Good heavens, my kids have grown up so fast.  Where did the time go?  My daughter was 8 when we moved out here.  Next month, she'll be 18 years old.  She has grown into an amazing young woman in the time we've been here.

I used to keep up with the photos and scrapbook an album at the end of every year.  It's been a while since I've done that.  Now that all of the photos are organized, I'm going to have to go back through our albums and see how far behind I am, and work towards catching up on the albums.

Once I figure out where I need to start, I will have my husband's Christmas present.  The boys get home from school soon, and I'd love to have them add their memories to the album as I go!

Now, if only cleaning my basement was this easy.  I still haven't made a lot of progress down there, but by God, I am getting the rest of the house cleaned in my quest to avoid cleaning the basement!