Taking photos on my phone is just too darn easy. Deleting photos is easy, too, but who remembers to go back through and delete the ones that are out of focus, were only reminders to buy something to begin with or are replicas? If you delete often, you get a gold star, but that’s certainly not me. I wait until my phone says it’s no longer backing up photos before I reach for my phone and start frantically deleting those bad photos that never need to see the light of day. Today, let’s get out our phones and go through this list to declutter the thousands of photos we’ve been carrying around with us all year:
- Is it a good photo?
If it’s not, is there a really, really, good reason to keep it? Such as, it has an important phone number on it you need to save. If that’s the case, go ahead and plug the number into your contacts and delete the photo. Photos take up a lot more space than notes and contacts. - Is it saved somewhere else?
Sure, we need to back up our best photos, but do we need them on every device we own? - Is it an *almost* duplicate?
In other words, do you have 15 of the almost exact same photo, but at different angles or in different lighting? Now is the time to choose the best one and delete the others. Sometimes it’s hard for me to decide which photo is best right after I take them, but give me some time and it usually becomes clear which one is the winner. - Did you take them to sell an item online?
This is where I get to delete a lot of photos. If I posted something to sell on Poshmark, the photos are still online. Even after I sell an item, they stay up on the site, so why store them on my phone? It’s really just wasting space.
As you go through them, I suggest you start organizing them into folders as well. I like to do mine by events, dogs, baking categories, like cookies and cakes, work, vacations and home, which can include any information about the home I want to remember. For instance, I have a photo of the air filters I buy so that when I go to Home Depot, I don’t have to make a trip back home just to see which size I’m supposed to get.
Sometimes I take photos for the Texas Farmers Market, which means I have tons of photos that aren’t necessarily for me. I’ve already posted them on their Instagram and uploaded copies onto their Facebook, so why do I still have copies of the photos on my phone from years ago — Including a lot of the ones that didn’t make the cut. I have no clue. Choose the best and trash the rest.
Going through your photos isn’t always the most fun thing to do. One of the ways I try to make it less painful is by sending photos to others along the way. Find a great picture of you and a friend from a trip a few years back? Why not send them a copy? You’ll likely reminisce about all the fun you had on the trip together.
Ultimately, your photo roll should make you happy. Delete those you don’t need and separate any work photos you have into separate albums, so you don’t have to scroll past them every time you’re looking through them.
Tiffany Lynn Young 