3 steps to conquer the psychic weight of your iPhone photos

I don't look at them, but I know they're there and I can't stand it.

I’m not going to pretend I’ve solved this problem. I have some solution-esque approaches that seem promising, but I’m opening this week’s topic up for input from you clever readers.

The issue at hand? The 20,000+ photos on my phone.

I think about how I have maybe 100 photos of my entire childhood, and then compare that to the 100 photos I took this week alone of my kids. If there’s any unambiguous indication we live in an age of excess, our photo habit is it.

And yet, it’s so hard to declutter them, isn’t it? They don’t take up physical space so is it reeeeeeally a problem? Each photo holds a memory. Pressing delete on your kid’s face (or the face of someone you love) is painful. It feels like if you delete a photo you are deleting the memory.

But as with all excess, the problem is that when you have too much of something it becomes impossible to enjoy it.

Do I scroll affectionately through old photos.…ever? No. It’s overwhelming to crack open the archives, and frankly most of my photos are not good, so I don’t do it. (Sorting through photos of whiteboards at work, plants that look cool, and screenshots of package tracking numbers is decidedly Not Fun.)

I imagine that in my old age I’ll spend leisurely days going through my photos. Will I actually do this? Who knows. But saving things (and paying extra for 2TB of iCloud storage) for a future version of yourself that may or may not materialize seems silly.

Knowing I have this massive blackbox photo collection hovering in the background of my life causes me low-level stress. What is in there? What if I lost it all? What if I never find the really special photos amid the clutter?

I have made valiant efforts in the past. I used to make a photo book at the end of each calendar year with highlights from the year. I did this from 2008 - 2014, but then as iPhone cameras improved, each year’s photo collection got so big the software simply couldn’t handle it anymore. So no more photo books.

But the photo collection just keeps growing, so I’ve started a new photo organizing project. Here are the principles:

1. Look at them. Photos are meant to be looked at and enjoyed. I need to find ways to get eyeballs on photos. And having ten hundred million of them makes them harder to look at.

2. Simplify. I don’t feel distraught that there are only 100 photos of my childhood. Thus, I do not need 5 versions of the same moment with my kid — I should choose the best photo and move on. If it’s not a photo I that makes me emotional, then I will delete it. Cluttering my phone or photo album with thousands of mediocre photos makes it harder to find, notice and enjoy the one outstanding one.

3. People, not landscapes. I will never want to revisit a photo of fireworks from 5 years ago, or that one cool sunset. No one cares, so stop taking these photos (this is something I scream to myself inside my head regularly). I can Google a cool sunset if I really want a photo of one…but why would I? If you’re an artist and this is your medium, then fine. But otherwise, what are you doing??

With these principles in place, here’s the game plan (none of these recommendations is sponsored):