I have a vast accumulation of photos stored in my computer and on an external hard drive. Growing kids, memories, holidays, birds, flowers, car adventures, all photographically documented, downloaded, and forgotten until… computer and drive no longer have space to accept even one more photo.  I could buy another external hard drive and keep going, but it would not resolve the hoard of digital images.  Nor would it help to alleviate the sad fact that I haven’t printed a single picture in more than two years, and probably less than three dozen since my youngest was born…

Armed with a vat of tea, a good play list, and determination I have started to tackle the daunting task.  After four hours yesterday I had sorted through 2014 and half of 2015.  Unfortunately, it was at this point I went from focusing on purging (yay me, I freed up 10G total so far) to thinking maybe I could label the dated folders so I would know what they contained without having to open every single one when I needed to find a specific image…it would have been nice to have this epiphany yesterday.

Now purging AND labelling, I started to feel like there was and end in sight. Part way through 2016 (big autumn east coast adventure tidied up), just a few more months to look through, then I would be done.  It was at this point I scrolled forward and found thousands (20,000+) of unsorted images. No folders, no titles. I am hoping I can get the computer to sort them by date and I will slog through from there.

The beautiful thing about this endeavour is that I get to spend time revisiting all the craziness that is my family through the years.  Hopefully they will keep refilling my tea cup as I stay on task.

…my brother just delivered my mom’s computer, which is hiding another 16,000 photos in its deceptively tiny size… urgh.