Where Bloggers Live: Keeping an Organized Computer
Welcome to the monthly edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes? Every month a group of six bloggers share their work-spaces, homes, towns, and more!
This month’s theme is “How I Organize.”
Uhm.
I’m probably the wrong person to be writing about organization. In the home, anyway. The two places I’m relatively organized are 1) image files in my computer and 2) the in-season part of my closet, but I shared that here, so won’t bore you with that again. Today.
Organizing Computer Files
I am VERY organized with image files (pictures) in my computer. I have to be. There are SO MANY.
I never understand when someone says, “I know I saved that picture…but I can’t find it!” If this is you, SORRY NOT SORRY. Ha.
Seriously though, it just takes two seconds longer to download to a folder You Created than to just let EVERYTHING go into the Downloads folder. Please. PLEASE. Ha. It PAINS ME when people can’t find their files. Your computer filing system is one of the few parts of life you actually DO have TOTAL CONTROL of. Don’t let that luxury go to waste!
I’m a “by date” saver. So, in the main “Pictures” folder on my computer, there are folders for each year (2021, 2020, 2019, etc). Then in each year’s folder, each day’s photos are saved to individual folders by date name, in this date order, “2021_06_11 FASHION SCHLUB Where Bloggers Live Organization.” If I’m shooting an outfit for a post I’ll name the folder something like, “2021_06_05 FASHION SCHLUB Bettye Centerport patio green dress,” naming the photographer, location, and clothing item…so as I’m scanning down the list of folders looking for something in particular, I have 5 hints as to what folder it’s in: date, category (Fashion Schlub), location, clothing item, photographer. Did I just say the same thing twice? Maybe, ha ha. I wanted to be sure the people in the back heard me.
Also, every month, I move the past month’s images to my external hard drive, continually freeing up space on the actual computer. It’s a thing of beauty.
MOST current pictures are “Fashion Schlub,” so anything not FS-esque stands out, like “Afternoon light in apartment” on Feb 9, “snowy morning at home” on March 2, or “Seal Walk Cupsogue Beach” on March 17. My life sounds kind of romantic if you just look at the image folder names 🙂 Trust me, it is not, ha ha. Sometimes there are folders called, “box pile” or “tangled jewelry mess.”
That’s my system for like…pictures I’m currently taking. There are other folders for pictures that I’ve…mmm…moved off my phone, saved from the internet, scanned, etc. The folders I have are the main categories that I save to all the time. I’m in the process of moving some of these over to the external hard drive as well.
Guh. I just realized I should have “hidden” the “Funeral Pictures” folder, ha ha. That’s a topic for another day. I actually started a post in that vein JUST before covid hit last year and it did not feel like the appropriate time for THAT post. But…it’s coming. And right now I want to go get pizza (I have no actual food in the apartment cuz I was away) cuz I’m hangry and I don’t want to take the picture FOR THE THIRD TIME. Don’t ask.
I know “organizing computer files” may not spark joy for many…BUT…it CAN! I love my orderly file manager and how I can find any picture from the past 10 years pretty easily.
I wish the REST of my apartment (car, life, brain) was as orderly. Maybe someday.
So, yeah, organizing is really not my forte. Hopefully one of my friends will have better tips for you…
Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Leslie at Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After
Em at Dust and Doghair
And to see some other things I’ve shared on Where Bloggers Live…
Where Bloggers Live: Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep
Where Bloggers Live: Sources of Inspiration
Where Bloggers Live: This Ain’t No Instagram Kitchen
jodie filogomo
This may not be sexy but it’s so important. Especially in the age we live in where we take more photos in a day than was taken the entire 19th century!
Would you believe I went kicking and screaming into the digital age of photos?? My husband had to drag me there and then I totally embraced it.
OXOX
Jodie
http://www.jtouchofstyle.com
bettyewp
I was slow to get into digital photography, as well. I loved my old semi-automatic film camera and it took really nice pictures. All the Katie baby pictures are film. THEN….ebay. And I needed to be able to photograph and upload product photos in the same day…and NOT send film out for developing daily. So I bought a weird cheap digital camera off AOL (?) and it took me an entire day the first time to figure out how to take the pictures then get them onto the computer. But once I got that sorted out I was like WHOA. It was MAGIC.
My NEXT digital camera used FLOPPY DISCS and it held like SEVEN IMAGES on a disc, but that seemed GROUNDBREAKING, cuz I could just slip the disc out of the camera and into the floppy drive on the computer and there they were. I loved that camera long time.
Once I started selling vintage clothing and shooting on live models, I wanted better photographs. I had a mentor/friend I’d met through Model Mayhem and he taught me a lot and loaned me cameras until I could invest in my own. I eventually sold my wedding and engagement rings to buy my first “good” DSLR camera. And I’ve slowly upgraded over the years.
But I do still have a love of film and have a couple film cameras around here but I don’t use them enough to fill up film rolls quickly, so sometimes I’ll develop a roll and there’ll be like 2 year’s worth of pictures on there!
And then yeah, CELL PHONE CAMERAS! I use my cell phone WAY more than my dslr for most walk-around shooting. It’s so nice to just a have a camera in my purse or pocket and the pictures IF THERE’S ENOUGH LIGHT are pretty good competition for the camera pictures.
Anyway.
Iris Smale
LOVE your computer organization. I also organize photos. Not exactly the same way you do, but they’re all in their own folders so it doesn’t take forever to find them. After reading your post it might be a good idea to put those folders in date order. I also like how you transfer them to an external hard drive. I try to do that monthly but sometimes it gets away from me.
See, you are organized.
Iris
bettyewp
“I also like how you transfer them to an external hard drive. I try to do that monthly but sometimes it gets away from me.” That’s more out of necessity than organizational skills. If I let two month’s worth of images stay on the computer, the hard drive is so full that things start running slowly, especially like photoshop, which I use almost daily. Photoshop is a resource hog and needs all the stars lined up to work well. So, pictures gotta go pretty quick. I take a LOT of pictures. For every one picture you see on the blog, I’ve probably taken 50-100.
I’m slightly insane.
Daenel
We are image organization twins. I don’t understand people who can’t find images either. I mean, why bother taking them? I also keep the unedited files because I’ve been asked for them by different marketing agencies that work with our college, so I have to keep stuff organized.
bettyewp
Oh TOTALLY. I keep raw unedited, full resolution edited, and resized edited.
Leslie Susan Clingan
I am so tardy in stopping by to read everyone’s posts. Life. My daughter has had some more serious heart issues lately and I have been in charge of helping with my granddaughters. Have met myself coming and going between their house and mine, 20 miles away. But as of today, things are returning to normal and I only had to make one trip across the mountain to help.
I am pretty fanatic about where I store things…especially pictures. And like you, I save them by date. Originally created folders for sets of photos…Trip to KY, Cady’s First Birthday, Cancun. But once I started blogging, I had more random photos to deal with so now I save them in chronological order. I use Dropbox, too, to help me save important documents so I can access them from any device where I can get online. Dropbox was a lifesaver when I was working and using several devices between home and school.
bettyewp
Oh Leslie, I hope your daughter is doing okay! OOO
I love Dropbox, too, in theory…but I don’t have a paid account so it fills up VERY quickly.I use OneDrive a lot now when I know I want to be able to share something with home desktop, laptop, and work computers, but, like DB, I have the free version that holds just so much…but it does feel more seamless to me than Dropbox.
mansi2903
Thanx, it helped me a lot.