What to do with thousands of photos of your kids

Start with one year, not the whole library

Trying to fix everything is why this never gets done. Pick one year and one child. A finished year is worth more than a perfect system you never finish.

The most recent year is the easiest place to start, because you still remember it. The year your second child was born is often the one that matters most, because it's usually the one with the fewest albums.

Expect far more photos than you can choose by hand

In one real year from one family's phone, there were 12,667 photos. 2,222 of them had the child in them. Those came down to 598 distinct moments, and 572 photos made the finished book.

That's why deleting your way through doesn't work. Choosing is the slow part: comparing forty shots of the same birthday candle, then doing it again for every week of the year.

What to keep for a year

• Every month. The big days bunch up. Look for January and March, not only the holidays.
• Ordinary days. The kitchen table and the walk to school are what you'll want later.
• One shot per moment. Keep the best frame and let the rest go.
• Their face. Group shots from far away rarely hold up on a page.

Three ways to get it done

• Do it yourself. Set a month a week, and pick five to ten photos. It costs evenings, and it's fully in your control.
• Use a monthly habit. Subscription apps ask for a small batch each month. These work best going forward, not for years you've already missed. See how the main services compare.
• Hand over the choosing. LifeChapters finds the photos your child is in, chooses the ones that tell the year, and lays them out month by month. You check every page.

Whatever you pick, back up first

Make sure the originals are somewhere other than one phone before you delete anything. A book is a way to see your photos, not a replacement for keeping them.

Related

• How to catch up on years of photo books
• A photo book for the second child