Although we all once had a point and shoot camera, gone are the days (for most people) of simply plugging it into your computer and printing out pictures for scrapbooking. Not that scrapbooking is a waste of time anymore, but we'll get to that later.
If you're anything like me, you probably are feeling a little overwhelmed about preserving all those sweet memories of your baby/toddler/children/family. It's a lot to take in, especially if you don't know much about digital storage and all the new hip ways to do it.
But I'm here to help. Luckily for both of us, my anxiety forced me into doing some research about photo storage and sharing in this new age of "The Cloud." Consequently, you get to see my findings all nicely typed up in a way that hopefully makes sense, but no promises.
Here's what I found:
Overall, most people born before 1996 (mommies especially) take TONS of pictures on their phones, but most people (mommies) don't necessarily know where to go from there. That is, unless you were born after 2000. Then you probably know exactly what to do with those pictures. But you hopefully don't have kids yet, since you'd only be 16. But I digress. Here are some long-term options for storing your photos:
- The Cloud
- An External Hard Drive
- Scrapbooking
You can always continue to print off your photos and spend hours scrapbooking. I hear it's a good hobby. If you don't have time for that, here are six other options to consider:
1. Chatbooks Chatbooks lets you live life simply. Although the online scrapbooking industry has really taken off in recent years, you might need to shop around a little before you find a product and a price you can get behind. Chatbooks offers an affordable 6x6 60-page photo book for $8, which is a steal. The best part? There's a user-friendly app that lets you live life while they create the books for you.
2. Shutterfly Shutterfly just announced that they're now offering unlimited photo storage, which is always good news. I've used them before because they always have sales and big deals going on. If you get an account with them, you'll eventually get offered a free photo book, so that's one way to do it if you like to save cash! They also let you design your own themed photo books, or they'll put it all together for you (for an additional fee, of course).
3. Groovebook Although once its own separate entity, Groovebook is now a subsidiary of Shutterfly. If you don't want to miss a single developmental stage, Groovebook can help. They offer a simple monthly photo book at $2.99/month. This helps you stay on top of the endless photo stream you're creating, and keeps things simple with a mobile app.
4. Flickr This platform lets you easily store, access, edit, and share photos. They offer a full TB of space for free. However, keep in mind that the videos you store on Flickr can only be three minutes long. One thing great about Flickr is their advanced photo search options, so check them out!
5. Amazon Prime Photos Unlike Google Drive or Dropbox, Amazon Prime lets you store unlimited photos. Of course, it's not really "free" since you have to have an Amazon Prime membership, but if you already have one, it's great news! Google Drive lets you store up to 15GB of photos for free, and storage varies with Dropbox. The nice thing about using any of these platforms if that you have easy access to your photos on platforms you already frequent (Google and Amazon).
6. LyveHome If money is no object in the photo storage/sharing game of life, consider investing in a LyveHome, which is one place where you can store, view, and organize all of your photos and videos. Although it's a bit pricey ($299 on Amazon), it does allow you to go through photos on an actual dedicated viewing device, which some people like.
Okay, so now you have some ideas about where to store, access, view, and share your photos. If you also want to keep them on your PC, that's fine, but you should probably back them up on an external hard drive of at least 500GB. Keep in mind, too, that most PC photo storage software lets you tag photos and organize them accordingly, so take advantage of that. iPhone and Android devices sync photos differently, so make sure you know the best way to do so according to your device.