Yup, this was me last week after becoming frustrated with my iPhone’s poor performance as of late. After a simple suggestion of “cleaning up” my phone and doing an update, I had to answer that question with a meek “well…exact numbers aren’t important, but let’s just say it’s in the 2,000 range.” #shameful
As much as I wish this was unusual for me, it’s not. Life gets busy and in all honesty, I get lazy. The irony is that as someone who is also a professional photographer, I encourage clients and friends to print their photos and not let them sit on their hard drives, flash drives, disks, phones, etc…
Case in point, my son was 11 months old before I FINALLY had his newborn photos printed. Talk about procrastination! So during my son’s 11th month of life I decided that I needed to listen to my own advice and start doing something with all of the pictures on my phone and hard drive instead of letting them accumulate. I have always admired the homes of friends whose walls were filled with family pictures and vowed that I would start the process of filling our home with our memories.
I started a personal project that I hashtagged #aprintamonth and decided that each month of 2015, I would print some type of photo(s). I’ve absolutely loved this project, as it’s stretched me to take my own advice and explore different ways to display our photos throughout our home. I’m still a work in progress as evident by my recent iPhone photo accumulation situation, but it’s about the journey and process. At least I know that I printed some of those 2,000+ pictures!
Here are a few of my #aprintamonth projects that have been quick and easy, a necessity for busy moms!
- Chatbooks: Chatbooks is a company that prints pictures from your Instagram feed or from albums on your phone. You can purchase a subscription in which every time you have 60 new photos on your Instagram feed, a new Chatbook will automatically be sent to you. How easy is that?? There are other companies that offer a similar type of product, but I’ve personally used Chatbooks and love it! My little guy enjoys flipping through our books and finding pictures of himself and family members. They’ve provided lots of fun and language building opportunities as he sees aspects of our daily life printed.
- Artifact Uprising: Artifact Uprising is a local company that offers high quality professional print products to consumers. My June #aprintamonth was a set of 25 5×5 prints. I’ve made one collage in our home already and am currently brainstorming ways to display the remaining pictures. I printed a mix of iPhone pictures and pictures from my big girl camera. From start to finish this took me less than 10 minutes and within several days I was ripping open the package at the mailbox.
- Professional Framing: This was my splurge. I created a collage using a photoshop template and had it printed through the professional lab I use. I then sent the print to Framebridge, an online company that offers a large variety of custom framing options at a reasonable price. This was SO easy! Once I had used their online tool to pick out the frame and mat for my collage, I was sent a mailing tube and shipping label. I packaged up my print by following their directions and dropped it off at my local UPS store. A couple of weeks later I had a gorgeous, custom framed piece on my doorstep! It still needs to be hung, but hey, one step at a time… Framebridge offers custom sizes and even specific frame sizes for Instagram pics. I realize that most moms don’t have access to photoshop, custom templates, and professional labs, but there are many consumer companies that can print large collages. A google search will elicit tons of easy options!
If you’re anything like me, with a very busy toddler underfoot, the thought of running all over town just to print and display family photos can seem overwhelming. Minus one simple UPS drop, these projects can easily be completed during nap time with time to spare, so that you can nap as well. I truly love walking around our home now and seeing so many of our pictures on display!
[…] everyday, right?! Nobody has time to develop or scrapbook them, and you soon end up getting asked, “You have HOW MANY photos on your Phone?!” Use those long nursing sessions to make a photo album with this app– there is no easier […]
This is very helpful, but I am more interested in how you are able to keep that many photos on your phone. Seriously, I would like to know. I can only store a few hundred at a time before my storage is full. I have to download them monthly. And it’s not because my phone is full of apps. I have friends who pull up pics of their kids when they were babies. What is the trick?
I’m totally the mom that actually has more like 3,000– it’s bad, really bad.
Ann – the number of photos your phone is able to store can be dependent on a few things.
1. How much storage does your phone have? I used to have the 16 GB iPhone, and filled it up so quickly — the 64 GB I have now definitely allows for more storage!
2. How much are you storing that you’re not aware of? Looking at my usage, I’ve currently got 7.7 GB of music (most of which I don’t listen to regularly and could access other ways) AND I’m storing 4.7 GB of messages — likely lots of texts with photos from my husband “Is THIS (insert photo here) the shampoo you wanted me to get?” — deleting those old messages will likely free up LOTS of space!
A quick google search of “How to clean up storage on my phone” should give you lots more great tips on freeing up space for the photos you really want to access!
Another great tip: If you have Dropbox or Google+ (which is free), you can store your photos there rather than on your phone and still access them from anywhere you have service!