Special Edition: The Easier Way to Organize Photos

**Casey von Stein** (0:00)
You don't have to view and touch every single photo in order to do something really awesome with them or to feel organized.

**Erica Mandy** (0:09)
Today is Saturday, August 29th. Most of us take photos for a good reason, to remember a trip, a school year, a funny moment, or just everyday stuff we don't want to forget. But then those photos start to pile up, thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands, sitting in our camera rolls, until the whole thing starts to feel less like a cherished collection of memories and more like one more thing that got really disorganized. So today, we're joined by Casey von Stein, better known as Ms. Freddy. She's a certified professional photo organizer who offers remote organizing services and online courses. Today, she's sharing simple realistic ways to get started right away. Like what to do if your camera roll feels overwhelming, how to save the best photos without sorting every single one, and how to make your photos easier for you and your family to actually enjoy.
Welcome to The NewsWorthy Special Edition Saturday, when we sit down with a different expert or celebrity every Saturday to talk about something in the news. Don't forget to tune in every Monday through Friday for our regular episodes, where we provide all the day's news in less than 15 minutes. I'm Erica Mandy. It's now time for today's Special Edition Saturday.
Casey von Stein, also known as Ms. Freddy, thank you so much for joining us here on The NewsWorthy.

**Casey von Stein** (1:24)
Thank you for inviting me.

**Erica Mandy** (1:26)
So I first want to talk about the purpose of photo organization before we get into all the tangible action steps. It's not necessarily just to have everything looking neat and clean, right? Why does this matter?

**Casey von Stein** (1:37)
I recently asked this in my audience, why do we take photos? And everybody was saying, for memories, for history, and to preserve stories for my kids. And so I think that's why we document things is because our brains can't remember it all.

**Erica Mandy** (1:52)
And yet, we then have thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of photos. We don't really look at them that often, right? So is that the purpose of organization is to enjoy them versus just having them sit somewhere and overwhelm us?

**Casey von Stein** (2:07)
Exactly. We have good intentions. We have the behavior down to take the pictures. And then after that, all those pictures seem to do is stress us out. Because there's so many and we look at our camera roll and think, I should do something about it.
I am failing because this number is getting bigger and it's messy and I wish I had a way to display the best photos or for my family to enjoy them. I mean, we just beat ourselves up when the point of this was to be fun.

**Erica Mandy** (2:35)
So what do you tell people who do feel overwhelmed thinking about organization and just feel like it's an impossible task?

**Casey von Stein** (2:42)
Two things. Number one, smaller is not necessarily better. Every client I work with comes to me with some shame in their voice when I ask, how many photos they have on their phone, as if the number zero is the right answer. And obviously, it's not. It just means that we have a lot that we've documented. So let's let that go.
And then the second thing is, we have a tendency to feel like we have to view and sort and do something organizationally with every single photo. And so when that number gets really big, I have 35,000 photos on my camera roll, if that makes anyone feel better or less overwhelmed, it's just a number. But it feels overwhelming to think, oh, the project is to look at every one of those 35,000 and do something with them. So I want to give everyone permission that you don't have to view and touch every single photo in order to do something really awesome with them or to feel organized.

**Erica Mandy** (3:38)
Okay. So what is your first step?

**Casey von Stein** (3:41)
So I think it helps to switch to looking at your library as I want to do something with the best items, right? I'm taking these pictures because I want to display them. And so instead of spending the limited amount of time you have in your photo library, deleting junk and screenshots and the normal things that happen, spend that time harding or starring if you're in Google Photos, the favorites because that small act of just hitting heart on the one that's good from the birthday party makes it easier to use and enjoy your photos later. So an example would be my digital frame sitting in my living room, has a setting where anytime I heart a photo on my camera roll, it gets added to the frame. And another example is at the end of the year. If I want to make, I call them my family yearbook. I make one photo book that has the highlights from the year. I just grab those ones that I hearted throughout the year, and it makes it so much easier to do something with them.