Free Course - organise your printed photos on 4 steps

Video 1 – What are your goals for your photo collection?

This video helps you decide what you actually want from your photo collection before you start sorting. Whether your goal is to reduce space, remove photos from damaging albums, prepare for scanning, add stories and memories, or create a meaningful family legacy collection, having a clear purpose will make the whole process feel easier and less overwhelming.

Video 2 – Choosing a simple photo organising system

Now it’s time to decide how you want to store and organise your curated photo collection. Some photos may stay permanently in your new filing system, some may go into albums, and others may eventually become digital photo books after scanning. Throughout the course I use my printable photo envelopes, which you can purchase below if you’d like to use the same system. They’re simple to print and assemble, look beautiful stored in a photo box, and give you space to record names, dates and memories — unlike standard dividers which often fall over and hold no story at all.

Video 3 – Dealing with emotions while sorting photos

Sorting family photos can bring up a lot of emotions, and for some people that can make it hard to finish the job. It’s easy to stop and reminisce over every photo, but during the sorting stage try to focus on organising first and remembering later. Once your collection is sorted, that’s the time to properly enjoy the photos, add stories and memories, and decide how you want to display or share them. Photos should be accessible and enjoyed — not left hidden away in piles or boxes never looked at. Take breaks when you need to, and work at a pace that feels manageable for you.

Video 4 – My simple 4-pile photo sorting method

Watch how I quickly sort my photos into four simple piles to make the process feel manageable and less overwhelming:
KEEP, SHARE, BIN and NOT SURE.

The goal is to create a curated collection that you can actually enjoy looking through in the future, instead of boxes of random unsorted photos.

Once I’ve finished the first quick sort, I take the KEEP pile and organise the photos into categories before filing them into my envelopes. At this stage I’m not too concerned about exact dates or perfect order — the main goal is simply to reduce, curate and organise the collection into something meaningful and manageable.

Video 5 – Creating your family legacy collection.

Video 5 – Finishing Your Curated Photo Collection

Now that you’ve separated your photos into piles and filed your KEEP photos into your new curated system — whether that’s using my printable envelopes, index cards or your own filing method — it’s time to start adding the stories and memories behind the photos.

Remember, the real value of family photos is not just the image itself, but the people, places and memories connected to them.

Once finished, keep your collection somewhere accessible where it can actually be enjoyed and shared with family, rather than hidden away in boxes never looked at. Your photos should become part of your family story again, not just storage.

Free printed photo organising course

Organise your old photos in a weekend

I designed and recorded this course because I noticed so many people had boxes of old photos but didn’t know where to start. Some people told me they had started sorting them years ago and still hadn’t finished.

I recently inherited my parents’ photo collection after losing my dad, so I understand how hard it can feel sorting through other people’s memories. There’s often guilt attached to letting things go like you’re throwing away part of their life.

But the truth is, we can’t keep every single photo, and keeping everything often makes the collection harder to enjoy, preserve and share.

The simplest and easiest goal to focus on is creating a meaningful family legacy collection a collection of photos that tells your family story and can be passed down through generations, with memories and names attached to them.

My parents had some lovely holidays, but realistically I don’t need 20 scenery shots from every trip. Instead, I chose a few photos of them looking happy and enjoying themselves, because those are the moments that really matter to our family story.

Over one half-day session, I reduced around 2,000 loose photos down to around 300 meaningful ones. I still have three separate albums to deal with later — pre-1960s family photos, older ancestral photos, and my own childhood photos . I will create separate videos for those in the future.

The photos I kept are now ready for me to add memories, names and stories to preserve them properly for the future and share them with wider family members who appear in many of the photos. I am using my own Printed photo

I’m also lucky enough to have the main original photos of my grandparents and several earlier generations, and by curating and scanning them carefully, I can pass those family memories and stories on to future generations too.

So don’t overcomplicate it.
Just focus on taking the first steps to getting started.

Join my FAcebook group for support

What next? Do you want to scan your photos?

Now that you’ve curated and organised your photo collection, the next step is preparing your photos for scanning. Watch my next video where I guide you through how to prepare your photos properly before digitising them.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is scanning everything first without sorting. This often creates an even bigger unorganised digital mess and means spending more money scanning photos they may not even want to keep.

By sorting and curating first, you now have a much smaller, more meaningful collection to scan, organise and share.

My goal is not just to help you digitise photos, but to help you create an organised family photo collection that can be enjoyed, shared and passed down through future generations.

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