I know, I know! You have all of your pictures on your phone. Your photographer delivered your photos to you on an online gallery so it could be shared easily. But when was the last time you sat down to look at your pictures & re-lived an experience of a certain event?

Prints remind us of who we are! Without prints, our photos will ONLY be digital images that will get lost. We will have nothing to hand down to the next generation. Stories will fade because there will be no artifacts to share with one another. I fear that wedding photos, baby pictures, family photos etc will be lost forever if we don’t take steps now to preserve them!

“But JP!” you say. “What about the latest craze of de-cluttering & getting rid of all the extra STUFF!

Friends – I LOVE the “The konmari method!” I am the queen of getting rid of all the things. Believe me! We don’t hold on to much. In fact! Prints are about the “fluffiest” things we have in our home. But we believe they are worth it. And we do our best to keep things as tidy & organized as we can with our prints so it doesn’t become overwhelming or junky. Here are a few tips for how to organize & keep prints alive in your home:

1. Make photo books!

   This year, we are in the process of starting a family yearbook! This will include ALL of the photos (well, the ones that spark us the MOST joy) in one large book that will be handed down to our children. Instead of printing EVERY single photo, we wanted everything all bound in one place for us to look back on as a family! We will try our best to use the same company each year so they can all fit on the same bookshelf neatly together.

2. Keep pictures in their frames

   My mom actually taught me this method! When replacing photos in your frames, don’t take out the old pictures. Use them as an album of their own! Instead, just put a new photo in front of the old one. When it comes time for you to replace the photo again in the coming months, you will get a chuckle out of the old ones in the frame. Love this every time it happens!

3. Keep external hard drives in a safe place

   We have bought external hard drives for our business & they are safely tucked away just in case anything were to happen! But we also have a system for our family on personal external hard drives. Each hard drive has a folder for the years. Then in each year, we break it down for each month. That way it’s easy to reference & find the picture we want. Also SUPER easy to make a yearbook by dumping all the photos in chronological order & organizing aesthetically!

Last but not least, here are a few favorite places we print our photos: J&D Photo (here in Greenville), Artifact Uprising, Chatbooks, & Parabo Press!

Happy printing friends!! #LongLivePrint

PS – In the pictures above, we purchased the “Baby Book” from Artifact Uprising because we wanted more than just a yearbook for Kerr. We believed that his first year of life was important enough for us to take time & journal the ways that we have watched him & grow. This also allowed us to document the significant things that have changed us & made us who we are today!