I’ve been making photo books for my family for over 20 years, and this is the system that has worked for me. Instead of letting thousands of photos live forever on my phone, I’ve made it a goal to actually print the memories and keep them organized in a way my kids can enjoy for years to come.
Here’s exactly how I organize our family photos, including the albums I use and how I divide up each year of my kids’ lives.
This is the link to the albums I purchased: https://link.amazon/B03S4NGyn
One of the hardest parts of making photo books is deciding which photos to leave out. When they’re your own kids, it’s easy to want to save everything—and honestly, I still struggle with it! But I’ve found that setting a limit is really important. It keeps the albums from becoming overwhelming and forces me to choose the photos that truly tell the story of that year.
Here’s the system I’ve used for our family photos, including the albums I use and how many photos I include from each year of my kids’ lives.
Album 1 : 0,1,2 years old - 100 photos for each year
Album 2: 3,4,5 years old - 100 photos for each year
Album 3: 6,7,8,9 years old - 75 photos for each year
Album 4: 10,11,12,13 years old - 75 photos for each year.
Album 5: 14,15,16,17,18 years old - 60 photos for each year.
Now that I've completed my first child's set of albums, I can tell you the most difficult year to narrow down where the photos from her senior year of high school. Looking back, I wish I had either gone with 6 albums so each year could get 100 images or maybe swapped album 4 & 5's numbers.
PRINT THOSE PHOTOS!
I use mpix.com for all of my personal images. I've used my local drugstore in a pinch and I've always been really dissapointed in the quality.
