🚧 Draft — not final. A generic, shareable version of this project's approach, published because it may help others. Give it a human edit before relying on it.

Organizing a family photo archive — the method

Most families' photos are scattered across shoeboxes, dead phones, several cloud accounts, and one drive that clicks. Consolidating them is very doable — the trick is doing it in the right order, because the common mistake is "organizing" one tidy corner while a shoebox quietly rots. (Keep where your own photos and accounts live private — that list is a security detail, not something to publish.)

1. Inventory every source first — then touch nothing

Before organizing anything, list every place photos live: albums, loose prints, phones, SD cards, each cloud account, external drives. Note a rough count and, crucially, the urgency.

2. Let urgency set the order

Anything on a clock jumps the queue, regardless of how many photos it holds:

• A failing drive (clicking, not mounting) — rescue first.
• Phones with dying batteries.
• Fading prints, especially the oldest.

3. Decide conventions once (then never argue again)

• Structure: e.g. year / event.
• Naming: e.g. YYYY-MM-DD — event — NNN.
• Backup rule: two copies, two places, one offsite — checked twice a year. (This is the rule that actually protects the memories.)

4. Capture the captions while you still can — the real treasure

The photos are recoverable; the stories often aren't. Schedule sessions with the elders to go through pictures together and record who, where, and when — in parallel with scanning, not after. This is the highest-value and most time-sensitive part of the whole project.