Three years ago I started on a trail like this, and didn’t get far. I wish I’d stuck with it, I might not be where I am today.

<<–Do you see that? Almost 30,000 photos taking up 67.2GB of space on my hard drive (external).

I’m fortunate to have a photo managing program that automatically sorts by month and year when I’m in management mode, but still. 30k worth of photos?

And do you know how many are ‘sorted’ in any way shape or form? Maybe 3%

What’s worse?  Probably 10% of them are missing the META data…no date (or WRONG date), nothing.

When I want to find a photo, unless it’s been taken in the past few months, it’s a scavenger hunt with pictures and my undependable memory.

So today I bit the bullet and started to remove the clutter.

I now have images sorted by human/family pictures, and not so much.  Then divided into years. In the process I did manage to remove 300 photos just by virtue of knowing they weren’t necessary.

Over the next month or two I hope to whittle down all of the blurry, duplicate, needless shots. Most especially of my family.  Also, so I can find photos I can use for blog posts, or just for fun.

Then, I want to back them all up (Hello new [amazon_link id=”B003MVZ8NI” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]DVD+R[/amazon_link]’s) on discs and store them somewhere safe.

Lastly, I want to print some out to have on hand.

My family deserves better than this disorganized mess. and my brain will be much happier in the end.

(Soon, I’ll be starting the same de-clutter concept on my house…it’s worse than my photos…we are such packrats)