I was feeling energized from meeting Stacy Julian and reading her new book, Photo Freedom, although the topic is not new to me, for some reason, meeting her and taking her fast paced Finish Line album class, I returned to her photo sorting philosophy with a fresh perspective.
Here's the deal, in 2007 I took her on-line class called a Library of Memories, but watch for it on Big Picture Scrapbooking in the future, if on-line classes are your thing. I tried to keep up with the reading material from the class last year, but just don't do well with routine events. Plus I wasn't really feeling her whole sorting philosophy because I've already scrapbooked our family & children's albums through 2004.
Well, last weekend I came across a BUNCH of photos that one, hadn't been scrapbooked, nor had really been sorted. So I set out to give her system a try which is basically about sorting in categories/person instead of chronological (which I do). Because I couldn't put my finger on ALL of Grandma Bryant's photos when she died last month (Feb 2007) I decided to re-sort a few years worth of photos using her category method. What I ended up with (besides a bunch of new projects to work on) was an entire box of my oldest daughter's photos and a box of "Family Branches" photos of family members that can go into those "Branch" albums my Dad has started, that we carry to family reunions, weddings and funerals. Family loves to look through the albums looking for themselves.
Stacy gets you started on how to sort your photographs, but it's a philosophy that can be easily altered to fit your space needs and storage style.