Overflowing?

Our Minnesota winter is taking its toll on our lives. We get a bunch of snow, then a melt, some ice, more melt, more snow, and this continues on and on and on. You may wonder what this picture has to do with My Foto Pal. Let me explain.

We have gutters on our new garage. We thought they would be a great idea to keep the flow of water going away from the walkways. However, due to our interesting (crazy?) weather, we ended up with a gutter full of ice. I spent time roof raking the snow off the roof several times, chipping ice away from the bottom of the shingles, applying pet safe ice melt to ice in the gutter when it was terribly cold, and then cleaning out the little part of the gutter that we believe was clogged after we got some melting. Then this photo happened. A sign of progress! Water was flowing - albeit slowly - forming this beautiful waterfall of ice. A few days later, the waterfall was gone, our gutter was empty and the snowy roof was dry. A sign of success! Of course, Mother Nature probably had a bit to do with it, too ;)

Let's apply this to photos. If you take the time to go through and figure out a good process and criteria for removing photos that works for you, and you spend time here and there getting it done, you will notice progress. Check your "trash" folder or "deleted" folder on your phone. Look at how many you have deleted that you decided just weren't worthy of being in your digital photo album. That waterfall is symbolic of this progress and number of photos building in the deleted / trash folders is, too. Once you feel you are done, you can push the "empty trash" button and get rid of all of the photos - they are gone - forever! Such great feeling! Just like it was a great feeling that all of the water ran through our gutter without any destruction to the gutters themselves!

If I would have been better about taking care of the roof from the beginning, we wouldn't have had this problem. If you start taking care of your digital albums, you won't be "in trouble" later. I don't think anyone can ever be "in trouble" for taking too many pictures, but it can slow you down, and you will have to work and work to make it more user friendly for you for whatever you decide to do with them: photo books, ornaments, calendars, graduations, birthdays, funerals.

Hope this analogy makes sense - I honestly believe that even a few minutes a day helps! Consider it exercise for your photo collection - a little each day is good for you!

Happy February! I hope wherever you are, you are enjoying great moments with friends and family and making memories! Let My Foto Pal know if you need help working on your digital collection!