Can of worms? More like a worm farm!

Well I have told you about buying my photo scanner. It is working a treat, steaming away copying hundreds of pics. I’m having a grand old time.

BUT! As I am saving them to my computer, I realised that really my pics are in a bit of a mess. I have folders everywhere, all sorts of folders, and in no particular order. It seems stupid to add more folders, in no particular order. So I am reorganising the whole listing of all my pictures. Have you ever tried that? Oh boy! What a job!

After a few hours to total chaos I decided I needed a decent system. I has taken a while to sort it out but I think I have it. This may not suit you, but I think it is the only way for me to do this.

I am putting everything in fewer main folders, and with lots of subfolders, with everything dated. I have sixty years of pics to work with, and I still have a large box of photo albums to start on. The only sensible thing seems to be to do them chronologically.

So I am doing a few main folders, for example one for our family, then subfolders for each child, with sub sub folders for them now they are married and sub sub sub folders for each child. Every folder starts off with the date, by year. So Matthews folder is 1967. October. Matthew John Dalgliesh. Other subtitles will be for family holidays, special family parties, family weddings, houses we have lived in, ( thats a whole computer full on its own) etc.

Then I'll have main folders for friends, all our China stuff, special people etc.

That has worked a treat. But when it comes to sorting the existing folders, well it’s like untangling ten tins of spaghetti. Hence the can of worms. I know quite a few folders are now doubled up, and certainly not in the right places, but how to sort it all out? I know…make a list of all the folders and work from those. Ha! Easy!

Well, not really. I couldn’t figure out how to print off the list of folders and subfolders from my computer. My dear friend Google just laughed up his sleeve and told me I was on my own.

So I did the only thing an enterprising   person would do, I wrote the whole thing out….a massive great list. Here it is here.

This is not such a clear picture, but it took about an hour to upload it so won't try again. 18 pieces of paper all sellotaped together across the bedroom floor and into the hallway. Now thats a list!.

Today I was visiting my daughter and told her about this list. She shook her head at me, as she does, when I am technologically challenged and asked me why I just didn’t print the screen? Simple question really. My answer? I never thought of it!

So today I came home and tried to print the screen but my computer just thumbed its nose and said ‘not today thanks’. But, ahah! I am not beaten yet. Di, a friend told me about the computer having a snipping tool, and I have used it in the past…it’s a funny thing, and you can snip and copy and paste and save and print it. So I snipped every folder in my pictures directory into a word doc.and printed it out. It looks neater, but it’s just as long. I have 18 pages of the stuff to sort through.

 

Anyway, I now have two good lists of all my folders and I intend to tidy the whole can of worms up into just a few long and tidy balls of wool, wound up and ready to go.

If you are thinking of sorting out your photos, better get to it. It’s not a job for the faint hearted or those who are time poor.