I Gotta Organise...my photographs! 



I adore photography, it's my favourite hobby. When I was asked to write an article for the Irish Times on how best to organise your photographs, I was delighted to get a chance to combine my two loves organising and photography! This is a job that can be done all year round and it's one that most people would like to do. With the arrival of digital cameras, people are leaving their great photos and memories on their computers instead of getting them printed and displayed. I'm guilty of this myself. A few months ago, I organised myself to get three hundred photos printed, but only this week have I started to put them into a photo album. And it's just great to look over all I've done, the places I've been and the important family events.

Reading in the sun

So for anyone who didn't see the article, here are my top tips for organising your photos.

1. Set aside time: 
Allocate a day or time per day that you dedicate to putting your photos in order and don't get distracted during this time. You may be tempted to begin showing the photos to those around you and reliving memories. Don't succumb to this, you can enjoy looking through the photos later when they're all organised.

2. The importance of labelling: 
Before moving photos from your digital camera on to your computer, always set up a picture folder first and make sure the folder is appropriately labelled. Labels should describe the theme of the photos and should include a date, for instance "Christmas 2011" or "Ben's christening November 2009". Make sure you choose labels that make sense to you. This will make for easier retrieval later. 

Perouges, Lyon, France

3. Creating categories: 
Sort actual photos out one by one. As you do, categories and sub-categories will emerge such as "Holidays - France" or "Events - Jane's Debs, David's 30th Birthday". Write the sub-category, for example "David's 30th birthday, on a post-it and place it on top of the bundle of photos. Hold them together with an elastic band. Place the photos in an envelope with the overall category, for example "Events", written on the outside. This will keep them together and organised until you get proper storage for them.

4. Toss and delete unwanted photos: 
Don't hold onto any poor quality or blurred photos. They will only cause clutter in your home or on your computer.


5. Storage: 

Catch the moon

Printed photos need a home. Designate a space in your home for your photo collection. This could be as simple as assigning a drawer and placing your organised envelopes containing your newly categorised photos there. Or you could purchase photo boxes which have dividers in them so that you can label up the divider and place your group of photos inside. They are stylish enough to have out on dislay in the home or will store your photos until you are ready to transfer them to a photo album or better yet, a frame! 

Always beautiful

6. Don't forget to back up: 
If you have a lot of photos on your computer, purchasing an external hard drive is essential for not only protecting your photos but also keeping your computer files organised. Once the folders of photos are moved over to the external hard drive they can be deleted off your computer, freeing up space. If you do not wish to delete all the folders you have just transferred over, create a new folder titled "Archived" plus today's date and place those folders in there. In that way, you will always know that folders in the archive folder are also on your external hard drive.

 Have fun organising!
Sarah 

Photography copyright of Sarah Reynolds

I Gotta Organise...my school subject files!

It's almost that time of year again - back to school! There's a lot to organise to get ready for the return - both for students and parents. In this post, I decided to start with how to organise your subject files and folders. Everyday, students come home with handouts & photocopies and where does this paper end up? Thrown on the kitchen counter? Stuffed down the bottom of the school bag?

image: publicschoolreview.com

If this sounds like your young student then it's time to start teaching them how best to organise their time and subjects. Responsibility for learning and studying on our own is expected very early on in first year of secondary school which is a huge difference to primary school. So as well as learning lots of new subjects, making new friends and a longer school day, some twelve year olds can find it quite overwhelming to have to deal with a lot more homework, deadlines and time management. This can then continue all the way along until sixth year, when the Leaving Cert really highlights a students study habits to date.

Getting organised will help students feel more in control and will help them understand the subjects better. So no matter what year they are in or at what stage of their education they are at, it is never too late to start learning to become more organised with their study.

So here are some of my tips on organising all the paper that comes with each subject.

1.    Generally, secondary schools offer first year students 10 – 11 subjects to bring them up to Junior Certificate. So first thing is first – the very minimum they should have is a folder per subject – yes 11 folders! This becomes the overall category.

2.    Then within each subject there are sub-categories. There will always be a need for a ‘homework’ sub-category and an ‘exam questions’ sub-category in almost all subjects. In languages there will always be a need for ‘vocabulary’ and ‘grammar’ sub-categories. In science they will need an ‘experiments’ sub-category and so on.

3.     After that, if you are not sure what other sub-categories to create within each subject, look to the exam papers. I know, you may think that September of first year is a little early to be looking at what’s on the Junior Cert paper – but that’s what you’re aiming for. Alternatively, you could use the contents of their textbook as a guide – particularly if they’ll be using the one book for a few years. What are the main topics in each subject for Junior Cert? Use this as a key to organising their files.

4.       Label, label, label every category and subcategory.

5.       Place items in the folder in date order – most recent to the front of the folder/ sleeve etc.

6.       Do not over-categorise. This is because 1. They won’t remember where they've filed things and 2. It will make organising their work difficult and will dissuade them from doing it at all.

7.       The folders or files you choose should be large enough to hold a good amount of paper. This avoids you having to buy folders often and keeps all their work together. Chances are the one folder is not going to do them until third year, but avoid buying small and thin files and folders as they won’t hold enough.

8.       Make sure you have all your supplies to help make organising easier. They will absolutely need labels. Other useful items are: a black marker, a stapler and staples, paper clips, clear poly pockets, file dividers, highlighters.

9.       Make time to file. I am sure that after two hours of homework, they won’t want to spend another minute looking at school stuff, but spending 5 – 10 minutes at the start or at the end of a study/ homework session to straighten up their notes, will make them feel better because they'll know where everything is. It will also make you feel better because they won't be panicing during the morning rush looking for their notes!

10.  Finally parents, let your teenager decide on the categories. They need to put their work away and they need to be able to find it again for future study. If you do it all for them, they won’t learn how to organise or use this system for themselves.

Are you or your teen in the process of getting organised to go back to school?

Let me know how you are finding it?

Any organising tips to share?

 Have fun organising!

Sarah