I had a realization last year when I was looking through Archer’s baby photos on my iPhone: I can’t imagine that in 90 years anyone’s going to be sitting around their kitchen table flipping through old digital photos on an external hard drive. I mean, maybe they will – maybe we’ll be living virtually through holograms! But there’s just something about having a hard copy of photos in our intensely digital age. I love seeing all of my aunts together sorting through old photos and trying to figure out which baby is which.

Then a few weeks later, I had to have a handful of photos printed quickly for a school project for Jude and it was oddly gratifying about having those printed images in hand.  That’s the stuff that you want to save in a fire, you know? Priceless memories that can’t be replaced. I still love looking through the old scrapbooks I made in high school and college, not to mention our box of wedding photos.

A FEW ORGANIZING TIPS:

Get an external hard drive – or two – and back up to them often.

Use Dropbox to automatically upload all of your iPhone photos as well as camera shots.

Every time I post a photo Instagram, I have a recipe set at If This Then That to automatically save a copy directly to Dropbox. IFTTT is brilliant, btw – I highly recommend it.

Print those photos and don’t stress about making a scrapbook. Get a large box for every family member (I like these cute ones from Emily Ley) and keep those photos, ephemera, newspaper clippings, etc. all in one place.

Make photo books for your kids. I made a few from Snapbox of some of our favorite events from the last year: Disney cruises, Archer’s first year, that kind of thing.

These layflat photo books from Snapbox are so darn pretty – the paper is gorgeous (and it makes a huge difference in the photo quality). They have the weight and size of a board book (think of the fun possibilities!).

Thanks to Snapbox for sponsoring today’s post! I’ve had several things printed from Snapbox in the past and their people are truly the greatest. They’re family owned and operated in California and they want to make you a gorgeous product.  So make your mama happy and print up something for her for Mother’s Day, k? Get 25% off with code MOTHERSDAY – hurry!  And follow along with Snapbox on Instagram and use the hashtag #freeyourphotos. 

What do you do in the era of iPhone snaps and a zillion photos in the cloud? Share in the comments!