How to keep 20 years of family photos tidy

Twenty years of photos feels like a mountain you'll never get through. There are tens of thousands of files, duplicate copies and holidays blurring into one another, and somewhere among them sits the photo you're looking for. Tidying it all in one go is something nobody keeps up. What does work is a simple system that almost maintains itself afterwards.

In this guide we keep it deliberately simple. We work with one clear folder structure, a few shared folders for the highlights, consistent names and a gentle pace. You don't need complicated software and you don't need tagging down to the last detail. This is enough to make your archive enjoyable and findable again. If the archive still sits on an external drive or at Facebook, you move it over in one go first; we describe that in importing photos from Facebook, Instagram or a folder.

Start with folders by year and event

The sturdiest foundation is also the most boring. Organise by time. People almost always recall memories through a year and an occasion, like 'the summer we went to Italy' or 'the year Grandma turned 80'. If you follow that memory, you'll find things again effortlessly.

• One folder per year at the top level: 2008, 2009, 2010. That's simple, endlessly extendable and always in the right order.
• A subfolder per event inside it, with the date first: '2014-07 Tuscany holiday', '2014-12 Christmas at Grandma's'. Putting the date first keeps everything neatly sorted.
• A loose 'everyday' folder per year for all the photos without a clear occasion, like school pictures, the patio or the dog. Not everything is an event, and that's fine.

Important: keep *storing* and *sharing* apart. A folder on Ohhi is visible only to you until you share it. Your year and event folders hold everything that belongs to a moment, including the failed shots you haven't deleted yet. What you want to show, you put in a folder you share.

Which folders do you share?

A common mistake is sharing everything straight away. Your family then gets hundreds of photos to look at, and a shared folder becomes just as cluttered as the chaos you wanted to escape. So keep them separate: your own folders are your filing cabinet, a shared folder is the picture frame on the mantelpiece.

A folder you don't share is seen only by you. A photo sits in one folder and is visible to the people you share that folder with.

On Ohhi you share per folder. For a real milestone, such as a wedding, a first day at school or a big family weekend, make a folder of its own with the best photos and invite the people who were there. A photo sits in one folder; the rest stays in your own folders. When new photos come in from your phone, the backup first puts them privately in your archive. How to set up the sharing is in sharing family photos without the group chat.

Names, duplicates and picking the keepers

Consistent naming is worth its weight in gold, even if it feels excessive at first. Don't rename every single file, but give your folders a fixed pattern: 'year-month short description'. One pattern you stick to everywhere saves you hours of searching later.

• Clear out duplicates before you sort. Many services detect identical files automatically. Do that clean-up first, so you never move the same photo twice.
• Pick your keepers per moment. Of those twelve near-identical snaps, keep the best two or three. The rest can go; a smaller archive is easier to search.
• Work in small batches, say one folder an evening or one year a weekend. Twenty years in a single sitting is a recipe for giving up, whereas half an hour at a time is something you can actually sustain.

Don't start with the oldest year, by the way, but with the most recent. That's where your curiosity lives, where you still recognise the people and moments sharply, and you'll feel the result straight away. Then work calmly back through time. If you come across iPhone photos in HEIC format that an older computer won't open, our free HEIC to JPG tool converts them right in your browser. And if a photo turns up that nobody remembers the place of, where was this photo taken shows how to find it back.

Work in calm batches instead of all at once. Half an hour at a time is plenty, and after that your system almost maintains itself. Once it's in order, you can share the best moments with the right people. With the whole family you can do that on one shared plan. If you just want to begin, create a free account and add your first year. For a big archive you can pick a roomier plan later on.