How to declutter and organise photos on your phone
When I was on holiday in Greece I rediscovered my love of photography.
I’ve been grappling with prioritising my passions for a while, thinking I must choose just one. The thing about wanting to be ‘something’ in my case a writer, is that it’s easy to think you need to look like everyone else doing that thing. Feeling different can feel like you don’t fit in and there’s no place for you.
I love taking photos, I love editing photos, I love curating them as a body of work on my Instagram feed. Most media types look down on this sort of thing and lump you into the eye rolling ‘influencer’ category. I’ve been conscious of this all year but I came home from Greece done with this line of thinking. You’ll notice my photos are changing slightly and that’s all very intentional. I’m ready to take a deep breath, lean into my own personal style and *try to not care what others think. I figure I can be both writer and photographer. It might even be what makes me different, it’s certainly what makes me me.
This revived photography passion has ignited some motivation when it comes to my photos. I’ve let them build up into the 10s of 1000s on my iPhone, stopped organising them on my laptop, external hard drives and generally just neglected that area of my life. Until last week.
I’ve taken my photos from over 10,000 to less than 1500 on my iPhone and I thought it would be useful to share the process I used as I know this is a bugbear for lots of people. Digital clutter doesn’t affect us in the same way physical clutter does but it can still get in the way.
Step one – create folders
I like to create folders for the photos I want to access quickly. For me these are things like horsey tips I’ve screenshotted, inspirational words I love, I also keep a praise file for when people say lovely things about my work so I can scroll through when I feel like the worst creator on the planet. Think about which folders are right for you and create some. This will also give you a good idea of which photos you’d like to save and which aren’t so important to you. The things we look at often are the things we should hang onto.
Step two – favourite your photos
This works in the same way as physical decluttering. It’s so much easier to imagine everything go thrown away than it is to decide what to throw away item by item. If you’re a visual person you can think of it as a fire or flood. What would you bring back? Use this method to favourite only the photos you would bring back. Do it en masse or do it a bit at a time, there’s no right or wrong. I had 10,000 photos so I did it over a few Sundays.
Step three – deleter app
Once you’ve got your favourites favourited you’re ready to let the rest go. There are a few apps available for this but after some online research I used deleter. It costs 99p, made me feel slightly sick before I hit the big delete button but it worked a treat. And there you have it, you’re left only with your favourited photos. It feels goooooooood.
And you’re done!
The trick to staying on top of photo organisation is to get into the habit of doing this regularly. Whenever I’m trying to start a new habit I like to twin it with something else I already do without thinking, like brushing my teeth. Personally, I try to tie in digital organisation with the finance admin I do on the first of every month.
If you decide to give this process a go, let me know how it goes or tag me in on Instagram.
This post was originally one of my simple letters which I send out to subscribers once a week (unless I have nothing of value to say). If you’d like to join this community you sign up here.
