ANAL-ytical Organization

Yes, it's true! I have a dark side, I'm inflicted with the analytical-perfectionist disease! I'm sooooooo obsessive-compulsive about organizing things. Which is pretty funny, if you could see the HUGE mess in my master bedroom, you'd be really confused by this. I think the issue is that only I can see the final result (in my head). You know, the big picture. So until I am READY to make it happen, it ain't gonna happen!

After a statement like that you might be surprised to hear I can scrap out of order. Well that's progress for me! I was stuck in a rut once, needing to stay in date order and NOT getting anything done except the baby books (since you HAVE to do them as the baby grows), and I guess I snapped out of it! Trying to stay chronological is silly!!! Why not scrap what inspires you now, and use up some older pics along the way for good measure?

Yesterday I was planning to to do just that. I have some cute NEW pictures I'm dying to scrap, and PLENTY of older ones lying about as well, but I was so disgusted with the tiny amount of usable workspace left on my counter, that I couldn't function. I ended up pulling things out of the cabinets beneath thinking I'd reorganize and get the stuff on top put away - HA! After it was emptied out I decided (for some unknown reason) that this would be the day I get ALL our pictures in order, and that's where I'd keep them! Never mind the poor neglected layout in progress.



Our pictures are already in photo boxes, and in date order...for the most part. But somehow the boxes have spread themselves to different areas of my master bedroom. Which makes late night scrappin' a challenge in itself. Imagine me looking for "that photo from 2003" and Gabe (Mr. wake up if the cat sneezes) sawing logs in the bed, not pretty! Makes it impossible to even go in there if he's sleeping. So I rescued the 2 boxes in the closet, 2 from the bottom shelf inside the TV armoire, and one in the corner next to the changing table/dresser. Let me tell ya, if we had a fire I'd probably go down with the ship, because I'd be all over the place trying to round them up along with our completed albums...which are in ANOTHER room! *yikes*

Just like most of us these days, I use a digital camera pretty exclusively. So you'd think I'd just have old pics and photo CDs. Well, not so much. I would say "oh, those pics are just too cute," and I'd copy them to a flash drive and get prints made with good intentions of scrapping them right away. Also, to save money, I try to order prints in batches of 50. So I've been collecting them in a drawer at my workstation (yes ANOTHER location) and they're crowding my embellishments! Fortunately I've labeled the envelopes for most of these with true picture dates, and I had to shift things around to include them in the photo boxes. But that's where I keep the CDs, so it's all good!



Now that the hard part is done and all my pictures are sorted. I'm on to phase 2. I plan to go through my albums and make notes of what is obviously missing. For example, my oldest has a March birthday, so if I open up the 2002 album and see Spring portraits and Summer vacation pics I know I need to pull photos to scrap her birthday for that year. I will also go through the archive CD to see if there is something out of the ordinary that I should include. Then I'm going to make a list of all the "missing" layouts for our existing albums and I'm challenging myself to finish at least ONE album this year. That way I can still scrap what I want and I won't be forced to stay chronological.

Well here's some more analytical craziness. I made a spreadsheet, which I'm sharing with you. >>CLICK HERE for a copy. I want to spread the organizational LOVE! hee hee Use it as a reference sheet to keep with your pictures. Just label it whichever year and type in the contents of your photographs. If you have prints like me, keep it in your photo storage with the appropriate year. If your pics are exclusively on CD, this would be a GREAT tool to keep with the disk. It will help you find that certain picture without viewing several disks or even going through a whole year wondering "when was that!?" You will have to view your disks to fill out the spreadsheet, but after you do, you'll be all organized!