How to Declutter Your Digital Photos

Have you ever gone to show someone a photo on your phone, but found yourself scrolling endlessly to find it? “I’m sure it was around here,” you think to yourself, mentally going back to the events near the time you took the photo.

Eventually, after working your way through random screenshots and duplicate photos you question why you even took them in the first place. You either somehow manage to find the one you were looking for, or you just have to give up, feeling slight embarrassment that you spent all that time looking for it.

In that moment, you realise you need to do something about the clutter that is your photo album. If you’ve now found yourself here, you’re in safe hands. As a professional organiser, my services range from brimming wardrobes to decluttering your digital life. 

In this blog, I’ll show you how to declutter your digital photos both manually and with some apps to help along the way. With added tips on how to digitally declutter for better peace of mind (and added storage).

Start Easy

I can already hear your thoughts, “how do I start easy when I’ve taken over a thousand photos in the last month alone?” Yes, that may be the case, but of those thousand, how many are actually a good shot – no offence intended. Aunty Janice has her eyes closed, that one is blurry, oops my finger was over the lens… you get the jist. 

Start by removing any photos which are blurry, out of focus or just make you question, why did I even take that in the first place? This includes the photos where you’ve spammed the shutter button and have 15 of the same photo, which have just contributed to your digital clutter. My personal tip for decluttering photos like this is to Favourite the best one, and delete the rest. Don’t think, just do.

Do you have a screenshot graveyard? If you’re like me, you’ll have a countless amount of screenshots, the majority of which you probably haven’t looked at since you took it. Well now is the time for you to make a screenshot graveyard, to make things easier for yourself, your camera roll should already have a screenshot section. Take yourself there and well you know what to do.. get digging (deleting). Same goes for those screen recordings too.

So, we’ve made a start, things are rolling – pardon the pun. Now let’s delve deeper and move on to the next steps of decluttering your digital photos.

Photo Decluttering Apps

Like with anything these days there are apps out there which will also help you with decluttering your digital photos. Plenty which are user friendly and available on Apple or Android phones. Apps like Slidebox can quickly sort and delete photos. Don’t worry though, it doesn’t just do it for you so you won’t lose any precious moments. Slidebox will show you photos individually and you simply slide one way to delete or slide the other to keep and put in an album. It’s as simple as that. 

Although Slidebox allows you to use the app for free, with the free mode it will give you an advert every 20 photos or so. So that is something to bear in mind. If you want to go ad-free, you can pay a one time fee, or choose a subscription package and you’ll be able to have an uninterrupted deleting spree. I’d suggest trying it for free first, to see if it works for you then decide whether or not you want to upgrade.

Another app is called Sponge – Gallery Cleaner, it has a similar system to Slidebox, swipe one way to keep and the other to delete. The difference with Sponge is that it’s designed to have a gamified feel, to make the tedious task of decluttering your photos more entertaining. Sponge also allows you to organise photos into albums, to group photos into months or weeks. And alongside this, it’ll also give you a clean up progress report, so you know where you’re up to with each section of your camera roll.

These are just a couple of apps out there, there are plenty to choose from. My advice would be to look around, try a few out and see what works for you.

Go Old School

Being able to take and store photos at your fingertips is a wonderful thing, but as we’ve already discussed, it quickly clogs up your camera roll and can leave you feeling overwhelmed when it comes to decluttering your digital life. Not so long ago, we did not have the luxury to endlessly snap a photo, we had to think wisely when we would take a picture as we were limited on how many photos could be taken on a camera. On top of that, we then had to wait for them to be printed and delivered to see if what we had taken was even good. 

Could you imagine the disappointment when you’ve been to an event and are limited to 25 photos and when you finally receive the photos, more than half of them are not even worth keeping. Thankfully those days are gone. However, having a physical printed photo is stimulating and evokes your senses and memories. Printed photos do still exist, with the bonus that you get to choose the ones which are printed so there’s no worry about what they will come out like. Alongside that, once they’ve been printed, you can remove the digital copy from your phone which is another step to decluttering your digital life, it’s a win-win situation!

A quick search will reveal multiple websites where you can have your favourite photos printed, some of which even print for free! You only have to cover the postage. One of my personal ways to declutter photos from my phone is to group my favourite photos from an event and print them into a physical photobook. That way, when family visit or I want to reminisce, I can pull out the album and have a gander. All the while, relieving my phone gallery of 100s of photos. 

Organise Your Digital Photos

My final tip would be to organise your photos into albums. This could be specific events, holidays, trips away etc. Whatever it may be, you can group together photos from a certain day or trip and store them in one place for ease of access. 

Furthermore, your digital device will often help you with that. Quite often, it will know when you’ve taken pictures in a certain location and without you having to do anything. For iPhone users, If you go on your camera roll and scroll down, you will see a section called “Trips”, here you can look back and reminisce, whilst you’re there you can go ahead and remove any of the ones which aren’t worth keeping. Two birds with one stone!

If you’ve been wondering how to declutter your digital photos, I hope these digital decluttering tips have given you a starting point. Soon you’ll be able to relax and free up time to do more of the things you enjoy doing. 

Remember to get rid of any blurry photos, duplicates and unnecessary screenshots; try an app to help you out; do it the old school way with printed photos; and utilise folders to stay organised. Remember to keep up the good work going forward so new photos are ordered as you go.

Don’t stress though, these don’t all need to be done at once, you can break it down into smaller and more manageable chunks. Whether you’re just clearing out your photos, or going for a full digital declutter, I’m here to offer you tips and tricks on your declutter journey.

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