A Naming System That Isn't Overthought
Okay so last time we talked about deleting the 396 sunsets, and hopefully some of you have actually done it. If not, no judgement, but it's still sitting there waiting for you.
Today we're doing folder names and file names. I want to say up front, this is the lesson where people either relax or overthink it into the ground. I've seen both. Someone will ask me "but what if I want to sort by person AND by event AND by year" and I get it, I do, but that's how you end up with a system so complicated you stop using it. Which brings me to one of my actual opinions: one system, done okay, beats three systems done perfectly. I would rather you have a simple folder setup you actually keep up with than a beautiful color-coded one that falls apart by March.
So here's what I do. Nothing fancy.
The system
Year, then month, then a couple words if it matters.
Like: 2024 as the main folder. Inside that, 2024-03 for March. If something in there is a big deal, I'll add a couple words to the folder name, like 2024-03 Skylars recital or 2024-07 Utah trip Inez. That's it. That's the whole system.
Notice the year-month thing goes number first, 2024-03, not "March 2024." I do this on purpose because when your phone or computer sorts folders alphabetically, "2024-03" sorts in actual date order. "March 2024" does not, it'll put March folders next to May folders next to January folders depending on the year number, and it gets confusing fast. Sooo, numbers first, always.
You do not need a folder for every single month if nothing happened. I don't have a folder for every dead month of my life. If January was just me and the kids doing normal January things, I might lump it into "2024-01 to 03" and move on. This is not a legal document. Nobody's grading it.
Doing it on my phone right now
I'm going to do this live so you can see it, mess and all.
I open my photos app, go to the Albums tab, and tap the plus sign to make a new album. I name it 2019 first (because I'm still cleaning up old years, remember, my 2019 folder trails off after August, I never finished it, I'm not pretending otherwise). I select the photos from January through, say, March, and drop them in.
That's genuinely most of the work. Select photos, drop in album, name the album with the year-month format. Repeat.
The part that takes time isn't the naming, it's the deciding what goes where, especially if your camera roll jumps around in time, which phones do constantly. You'll be scrolling January and suddenly there's a screenshot from four months later mixed in. That's normal. That's just how phones store things before you sort them.
Where a couple of words actually help
I keep a running photo project of my pickles. Every batch, I take a picture of the jar, sometimes the label if I changed something in the recipe. If I just called those folders "2024-04" and "2024-06" I'd have no idea which batch was the one where I cut the sugar down, or which one turned out too soft because I didn't leave them in the brine long enough. So those folders get named things like 2024-04 pickles batch 12 less sugar. That little bit of detail is the whole reason I can look back and actually use the photos instead of just having them.
That's the test I use for whether a folder needs more than the date. Will future-me actually want to know what this was? If yes, add a few words. If it's just normal life, the date's enough.
A caution on this
Don't rename your original photo files themselves if you can avoid it, just organize into albums or folders. Some backup systems track photos by their original file name and date info, and renaming the actual files can sometimes confuse that, or at least make it harder to tell later which backup has which version. Albums and folders are safer. You're sorting, not renaming.
What this is not
This is not the moment to caption every photo, tag every person, or build some elaborate database. I feel like people hear "naming system" and think it needs to be thorough. It doesn't. Year, month, maybe a few words if it's something you'll want to find again in five years. That's the whole bar.
Roberta from the ward asked me once how I got the Relief Society activity photos sorted so fast, and honestly it's this. Just the date and a couple words. Nothing clever.
Before next time
Pick one recent month, name a folder for it using the year-month format, and drop this month's photos in. That's the only homework. Don't go back and redo your whole camera roll tonight, we'll get to more of that later.