Both digital and printed photos take up a lot of space and it’s so easy to mix photos that you end up with a mess of pictures you’d rather shove under your bed or delete from your computer than tidy up. Sometimes just deciding how to organize your photos without spending a fortune is more of a challenge than the organization itself. Here are some of the best inexpensive ways to organize your photos.

1) ziplock bags

This is one of our favorites. It’s inexpensive, protects images, and is great because it allows anyone to write on the Ziploc with a permanent marker to show the contents of the bag.

2) Hanging folders

If you don’t have a large number of photos, but want to keep the prints you do have organized in one place, hanging file folders are a good option. Labeling your photos is easy when you use hanging file folders. The Container Store has great options.

3) Shoe boxes

A tried and true method of storing photos, using shoe boxes alleviates clutter and is a great way to recycle shoe boxes instead of throwing them away. Shoe boxes allow you to categorize a large number of prints.

4) rubber bands

Separate different events or years and color code them with a variety of colored rubber bands.

5) Paper photo boxes

This is a step up from shoe boxes, but a cleaner, more organized look to store your photos.

6) plastic photo boxes

These cost a bit more than paper photo boxes, but the benefit here is that plastic photo boxes are made specifically to store your photos and will keep your prints from getting dusty as they will be in an airtight container.

7) plastic boxes

There is no need to buy plastic boxes designed specifically for photos, normal plastic containers that come in an endless variety of sizes and shapes will do the trick. You may find that different shapes of plastic boxes are better suited to the space you have to store your photos.

8) Scan with a digital archivist – store with a third-party service provider

This is probably the easiest and most effective way to store your digital photos if you are willing to spend some money. It’s worth the investment to have a digital archivist come to his house to back up and categorize his photos, especially in case he loses the original files.

9) Categorize on your Apple computer in iPhoto

If you’re an Apple user, a great way to organize your photos is in iPhoto. iPhoto breaks it all down and lets you organize photos by dates taken, events, and even uses facial recognition technology to organize photos of everyone in your photos.

10) Kraft paper with rubber bands

If you like being able to quickly sort through your prints, labeling your photos with butcher paper and wrapping them with a rubber band is another great way to organize your prints.

After exploring several different ways to organize photos, our experienced digital archivists prefer Ziploc #1 bags. It is the cheapest, fastest, safest and most versatile photo organization method. The other methods have their place to help you organize your photos, but they may cost more or take too long.

Efficiency and getting to digital format quickly is the top priority of our digital archivists. The organization of physical photos tends to have a lower priority than digital copies. Once you have them digitally, you can easily organize them on your computer.