Pictures On Your Phone

Mary Anne Ivison  00:00

The declutter queen with Avery Cundill,

Avery Cundill  00:07

where were we? I think you're supposed to be discussing decluttering. Oh, right, don't worry. I know. It's just that there are so many places to begin, but let's dive in. I was talking about decluttering with a friend of mine a while back, and she had a wonderful question, but how many things are there really to declutter now I know what she might have been saying. Are there enough things that need decluttering to actually sustain a whole podcast? I found this to be a super cool question, because in my head, once you begin and learn the system, there is no end to what you can declutter. Now this is not to say that you will always have clutter no matter what you do. It simply means that there are always areas of our lives that we can attend to simplify and create space in which is exactly why today I am jumping to an area that is often overlooked. And maybe it's because we are always looking at it the pictures on our phones. Now let me stop there, not tangible, not physical. What can we call them? Cyber? Okay, let's get off this science train right now. You may be doing the oh shit face. I have two gazillion pictures on my phone. You may have pictures of everything and anything, travel, food, that last event you were at a pair of pants you desperately want to buy online that you don't want to forget the name of how about strange pictures, like pictures of a menu that you need to blow up to see because you forgot your reading glasses at home. Yes, our pictures can be interesting. Have you ever scrolled through your photos on your phone and thought, Holy Hannah? What on earth? Well, I sure have. And then I delete them, and then a whole new crop of interesting pictures show up again, and then again I must declutter all these pictures. So for this and so many other reasons, it's important to declutter your photos on your phone. But I love all my photos, and I can't even imagine just deleting one of them. Well, get over it. I promise you you can, and once you start, you will be so pleased getting these photos off of your phone. I'm not a phone expert, but I am certain that creating space on your phone falls into that good idea category. If you are listening to the podcast on your phone, I would suggest you find another way to listen so that your phone is free and available. As this project can take time and focus now let's open our photo app. You can really start anywhere, but you may want to scroll, scroll, scroll to your oldest photo and begin there. Duplicate photos are no brainers, but also scrutinize and delete photos that you don't need to keep. I know personally that I often take multiple photos of the same thing and then I just forget to delete it, even not exact. Copies can go to one by one. Delete, delete, delete, do you need 10 photos of the same mountain? Delete, do you need that picture of that number that you've never called and don't need anymore Delete. If you are a photo taker extraordinaire, this is going to take time, but stay the course. Take breaks, but keep going. You will be shocked how many photos you are actually able to delete,

04:24

and now with the declutter queen.

Avery Cundill  04:29

So I want to welcome my very good friend Laurie York to the podcast. Hi Laurie. Hi Avery. Laurie is a retired business woman. She has run businesses in Calgary and Winnipeg for the past 20 years, and her businesses, they're brokerage firms, and they specialize in travel, medical insurance and so on a more personal level, Laurie has a daughter who's recently been married, and she loves traveling and driving. Around her giant boat. She's trying to be retired, but I know you, Lori, and I know you've got a lot of things on the go, no matter what, but she's retired from the insurance business and is now pursuing other ventures. So thank you, Lori, so happy to have you. Great to be here. This podcast is largely about decluttering, and I'm trying to bring on guests, friends and others, just to sort of discuss things that they're looking in their life to declutter. And I know you probably have a little bit more time now for this, even though I know you're super organized, I've been to your house. She's not a paper all over the place, person. She is organized.

Lori York  05:42

In my life, I've lived during the times when there's no media files for photos. So I have paper photos, a lot of them, I have boxes of these things that are taking up space in my basement, and I really would like to get them organized, and I just feel like I don't know where to start. And when I pull them all out and I take a look at them, I just get overwhelmed, and then I put them back and don't look at them again for another six months. So that is one of the jobs that I was really hoping to get to when I retired. And now that I'm here, I feel like I need some help.

Avery Cundill  06:19

And you know, it's interesting. A lot of people, they have trouble with paper photos. So you've come to the right place. Interestingly enough, I undertook this project during covid myself, when I was sort of stuck at home, and I was like, Okay, let me deal with photos. And so I've got some really good ideas for you. Here is where I'm going to guide you in decluttering. The one thing that I find really helpful, and it's probably the most labor intensive component on decluttering, is to basically group, if you're dealing with paper, photos, and I know you're probably going to run for the hills when I give you this first step, locate all of these photos. So you just said you had some in boxes. You might have albums. You might even have. You know, remember when we used to get photos and they would be in like a little package, and, oh, there's 20 photos in here. You want to basically make it your mission. Step one is to find and locate all of your photos, every single one. I know it's a lot, but albums, boxes, folders, files, wherever you think they may be hiding and of course, not an exact science. You might end up missing some but try to get all of them. Now, I know what you're saying. Where do I put them? It's really important to find a little designated space for you to work, because this might not be a one day event, it might be, but it would be a long day gather all of these photos. And kind of when I was doing this, I had in my other house that, you know, the kitchen table, I would use this space as my dumping ground, or even my living room table, my dining room table, so you get all the pictures. Now you've even gotten yourself to a point where you have all of the things that you need to deal with absolutely even now are you kind of thinking, Okay, where are they? Because that's where we want to start going. Even with decluttering, the mind kind of works before the activity. That's what I personally find. I'm like, Okay, I'm already thinking, you know, like when you go on a trip and you're trying to plan what you're packing, then you're kind of, your mind is there, and then you can go to your closet. So it's the same thing. I want you to do the legwork. I call it a scavenger hunt, just to make it fun. You've got all your pictures, you're gonna now have an idea, not an exact, but an idea of how many photos you're dealing with. Okay, so if you've got 10 boxes, you know, okay, this is, you know, this is going to be a lot, doesn't matter how many. But the reason that that's important is is you're going to make a little investment, and the investment is going to be in something that I call photo boxes. You can buy them anywhere, and Amazon is not a sponsor yet, but you can buy them on Amazon. You can sometimes get them in sets of sixes. You can buy four two. I like to have them all the same, just because that's me. They don't have to be all the same. But you want to buy these photo boxes, because this is going to be your keep pile, okay? And we'll get to that in a minute. But if you don't have an exact idea, you know what? These boxes are great for everything, recipe cards and other things. So buy a set of six, you can always buy more. They're not very expensive, and they're a great way to house photos. They don't involve, you know, those albums where you've got to, like, slide them in, none of that. It's pictures in these boxes. Is, and that's it. So it's a super easy way to sort. So now we've got piles of photos, and we've got photo boxes over here. You can even start this as you're waiting for the photo boxes to arrive. Then you're going to start sorting. What you're going to do is you're going to have a garbage or recycling bag right there with you. I'm really big into my make it easy to chuck things. Once you start going through these photos, there's gonna be a lot that you can toss people you don't know in the picture. Maybe you don't need to keep that one seven pictures of the same thing. Maybe you don't need to keep seven. You're going to go through every photo. Is going to be touched and looked at, you know, and that's the way that we feel like, okay, I'm not getting rid of precious things. You're going to have a hands on approach here. Okay, so you're going to take the photo, you're going to look at it, keep it, toss it. Every photo. This is going to happen. Are you still with me, or have you ran away? Oh, no, I'm loving it. Now you've got a bag of photos that are garbage, and trust me, you will have a bag. You might even have two, and then you're going to have your keep pile. What do we do with the keep pile? So now you're going to start sorting as you're going through the photos one by one, keeping and throwing, you're going to get an idea of what kind of system you want to have. Okay, so let's say you see, oh, I have so many of Miranda growing up. You might want to make a Miranda and Miranda's Laurie's daughter, by the way, you might want to have a Miranda box, just a photos of Miranda. You might even have two. You might want to do it for trips. You might want to say, oh, trips that I took from 2000 to 2010 that's going to have a box. You might have family stuff. So you're going to kind of have to meld this activity to your own photo set. So for me, just as an example, I made a box for each of my kids. It's not an exact science, because obviously there's going to be some two kids in one photo. Which kid gets the photo, but you do your best and you make keepsake boxes. And I found that a really nice way to do it. So I have three boxes, one for each of my kids, and then I have an other box with all of my photos. And the boxes are quite big and can hold a lot. You don't have to sort them. You just throw them in. You might say, Oh, I have a ton of photos of my parents. Maybe I want to make them a box. You want to be sorting these pictures in a system, the ones that you've decided to keep and love and have on your shelves, they need a home. That's what the boxes are for. So example, you make a nice one for Miranda, maybe you have one, including wedding photos, I know she just got married, or trips. You don't have to categorize the boxes either. You just throw the photos in the box, and that's their home. Because if we start getting fussy, it just gets to be a give up. You know, when you said you wanted to give up lot, you just want to give up, you know? So, yeah, yeah, that's the plan. And I think that at the end of it, you can have as many or as few boxes as you want, but once they're all housed, maybe some of the boxes get given away as gift. Here's some photos I thought you might like, and then you find a nice place in your house, out of the way, closet, shelf, stack them up, and you're done.

Lori York  13:39

Yeah, like, my boxes are absolutely unorganized in every single way. So I love the idea of those photo boxes. I hadn't had that idea because in my mind, I was thinking, well, I probably I'm going to need to buy albums, and then I'm going to be putting pictures in, like all the slides and these albums, and that's where I, like you said, I just gave up on the idea because it just seemed like a insurmountable piece of work. I don't

Avery Cundill  14:05

know who invented those. Honestly, they're the worst thing ever. When I did this project myself, I was so frustrated with those albums, I just started ripping things out of them. They're ridiculous, because I don't know how anybody ever took the time take your photo, put it, there's no organization to it, and it's just a pain in the butt. So the photo boxes are the best, because, honestly, you just throw the pictures in, and then if somebody wants to look through, they pick them up. They look through. There doesn't need to be a leafing of albums that that system is chaos. I really find that the photo boxes is a great decluttering tool. Yeah, sometimes we have, like, emotional attachments to photos, and that's but remember that you don't need to keep every picture, even on our phones. When you go through your the you know the pictures you've taken on. Your phones, you can delete a lot of those photos. I want you to think of the physical thing, the same thing as if you were like, you know, this was on my phone. Would I keep it? No, delete. And throwing out photos is not erasing a memory. I love this activity because sometimes we feel cluttered when we don't really know what we have. And once you've touched every photo, everything you have, you'll know. You'll say, Okay, this was garbage. This was there's so much garbage that we just keep you know when you've moved, and I know you've moved a few times, I always like to think, think of it as if you're moving all the time. What of these Am I taking with me? And what am i not i am getting rid of no what no longer serves me is so great.

Lori York  15:51

Yeah, I'm sure that's a great feeling. I've had that feeling in other areas that have made it just worthwhile doing. So I'm sure this is going to be worthwhile doing as well once I get to it. But I think your point is well taken like you need to be very vigilant and throw away the things that you can, because you just end up keeping everything. At least for me, I keep everything, and then I have too much and photos.

Avery Cundill  16:15

You know, it's something that it's kind of like your kids artwork or things from the past. There's a there's a sentimental thing to it as well, but we have to remember, you don't need 10. You just need one. You know, like, when I was going through this, I was like, looking at pictures from my kids birthday parties. I'm like, Who are these people? Like, there's some people I just didn't know. Who knows? The camera could have just clicked. It could have been people working at the party place. I don't know, but I'm like, I certainly don't need this picture anymore, and that's what decluttering is. It's not getting rid of all your memories. It's decluttering them so you have the things that really are important

Lori York  16:51

to you. Well, I am definitely going to go onto Amazon and find those photo boxes. So I'll definitely do that beautiful once I get this paper based picture problem off of my mental list, I think about my even my phone, and all the photos that are on my phone, because in the old days, we didn't, when you had an actual camera, you didn't take a picture of your breakfast or your dinner or whatever. And so I have a ton of those type of pictures in my phone that I should go back through and and purge

Avery Cundill  17:22

as well. I know you travel a lot. The next time you travel and you're on the plane, make it a mission that you're going to declutter. I like to call it edit out your phone pictures. I recently did this. It took me over an hour, possibly more, but I was ruthless. And I was like, I take pictures of menus because I can't see anymore, and I blow them up. I had pictures that were like, Oh my gosh, and videos like, you know, sending a video to someone. Oh, look at this. What do you think that takes up so much data, you got to get rid of that stuff. And I just went through my whole thing, and my phone is now clear. A lot of junk is off. I'm sure my cloud is happy, and you need time to do it, because it takes time because you want to look and go, do I need to keep this or do I need to delete it? But it's the same thing, the delete button is your garbage, and you just get rid and get rid and get rid. Maybe there's a way that, okay, how do I want to preserve some of these, not just in my phone? Maybe you want to put them on a on a drive, or maybe you want to print some up and make an album. And, you know, there's a lot of different services. I know that one of the Shutterfly make an album, if you want to have, oh, an album from a trip that I took, I want to have a 10 pager. I love the idea

Lori York  18:47

of doing that on the plane, because there's not a lot to do on the plane. So, you know, you kind of have a an amount of time that you can focus on it and not be interrupted. So I think that's great because I have a confession to make. I literally, just a few weeks ago, upgraded the storage on my phone. Yes, I'm now paying double, like, instead of 199 and paying like, four, whatever it is, $4 I

Avery Cundill  19:08

have another friend, and she can't get rid of some stuff, and she lives in a smaller home. And I said, So where, where is it? She goes, Oh, I pay for a storage locker. And I'm like, what? She goes, Yeah, that's what we're doing now. Where I said, have you looked at the stuff in five years? No. And so we're just keeping things. And when you get to the point where you're paying to keep them, then maybe you got to go, Okay, wait a sec. What am I doing? This is something that can be managed so easily.

Lori York  19:37

It's just really the physical

Speaker 1  19:38

barrier of getting over the hump of starting to do it. It's very

Avery Cundill  19:43

important to set aside the time if you try and do it in between this and that you're never going to do it, I don't have time. It has to be like a solid Sunday where you're like, Okay, I'm putting on my sweats. I got my coffee. This is what I'm doing for the next five hours. And the same with the phone thing. Like, if you start doing it, you know, I was doing it a little bit, here and there, and it wasn't effective. And then I was like, Okay, this is it. And it did take a while, but it got done. That's the very important thing about decluttering. Block off some time for it.

Lori York  20:16

So Sunday morning and sweats and coffee calls for Bailey's, I think, yeah, we'd go with coffee and Bailey's and get the project started.

Avery Cundill  20:24

I wish I was with you, because if I came, we would have it done in no time. Tell you what. Next time

Lori York  20:29

you're in town, I'll show you the finished product.

Avery Cundill  20:30

I love it. And you know what, Laurie, I'm counting on you to update me. The audience needs to know what happened with Lori's photos.

20:39

Should I take a picture?

Avery Cundill  20:40

Yeah, I think so, with lots of time, but I will be coming back at you for an update.

Lori York  20:46

Sounds good? Abe, thanks so much.

Mary Anne Ivison  20:49

Thanks for listening to the declutter queen with Avery Cundill for more decluttering tips and tricks, go to the declutter queen.ca. Produced and distributed by the sound off media company the.