The top 4 things you can do to declutter your camera roll

30 May The top 4 things you can do to declutter your camera roll

Are you anxious that at any time that dreaded ‘storage full’ message will pop up just when you are trying to take a photo?

This post is all about PHOTO CLUTTER and some of the strategies that you might want to use to take control of the chaos on your camera roll.

Photo Clutter is when you get this kind of message on your phone or when you simply can’t find the photo you want, WHEN you want it. We would categorise photo clutter as abundance clutter.   When people talk about abundance clutter with THINGS they are talking about when you keep large amounts of a particular product that go unused or buy new items in triplicate ‘just in case’ you need it someday.

With photos the abundance comes from taking too many in the first place. Sometimes this is because of the illusion that you have an infinite amount of space available. You can also fall into that same trap of holding onto the photo ‘just in case’ but most likely it is because just like ‘money spent is money forgotten’, in today’s day and age it has become a case of ‘photo taken – photo forgotten.’

Again, just like with physical clutter of things, taking and storing too many photos can result in hoarding, in this case digital hoarding – which is a reluctance to get rid of digital clutter. Emerging research on digital hoarding suggests that it can make us feel just as stressed and overwhelmed as physical clutter.

The last thing anyone needs in their life is more stress, so we’ve put together our top tips for controlling photo clutter.

TAKE FEWER IN THE MOMENT

Do you hate washing and ironing? Fewer clothes = less laundry! Same applies with photos: the fewer you take in the first place the less you need to organise and find storage space for. Our favourite technique is to, for those old enough to remember (for the youngsters ask your parents) – pretend like it is the 80’s again and you only have 36 shots on your film, this is one instance where a scarcity mentality can be a good thing! Read more on taking fewer photos in the moment in this article – Take Fewer Photos In The Moment

IMMEDIATE ACTION

Delete excess photos as you take them. For example, you have just taken a burst of 20 shots trying to get a great smile from the family. Right then and there, flick through and delete the total duds. You can come back later and further reduce to the BEST shot

RULE OF SEVEN

This is a great technique for event photos or even just the example given above. Look at each photo in the series and mentally rank it out of 10. The sliding scale of 1 being lowest (definite delete) and 10 highest (keeper).  BUT the rule of 7 means that you can NOT use the ranking of 7!  Give it a go and see how it helps with your keep or cull decision making process.

More detailed tips in our free video training

CONSISTENCY – RINSE AND REPEAT

This might seem like Captain Obvious but the more consistently you act, the easier the process will become because you avoid the build-up.

I look at my camera roll and delete EVERY DAY

I name, file and back up EVERY MONTH

I create photo books EVERY YEAR

We’d love to hear in the comments below, please let us know – what is one thing that you’re going to implement as a result of this post. Bonus points if you come back and tell us what difference it made!

Have a magical day!

Mara