Browse through your photos to determine which ones you’ll be using in this particular scrapbooking project. As you do this, you can begin to organize them into groups for each page. Normally, you’ll need to choose from three to five photographs for each page, but it will depend on the size of your scrapbooking album and size of your photos.

Next, for each page in the scrapbook, you should choose a single photo to be your focal point. Every page should have a focal point, an area to which all eyes will be drawn. That spot needs to occupied by the best, most colorful photo you have for that page. To enhance the attractiveness of this central picture, you may choose to have it enlarged. Of course, how much larger you make will depend on the size of your scrapbook page and the number of pictures you have planned for it.

Once you have all of your photographs picked out, you should store them in archival photo boxes. Or at least put them in Ziploc bags–one bag per page–and put them in an airtight container. Yes, it’s true that you’re going be working with them right away, but you never know when you might need to take a break from your project. It will also take time to work through the book, and there’s no point in taking a chance with the photos for the back of the book while you’re working on the first pages.

Don’t forget to take the pictures that didn’t make the cut for this project and return them to their place in your organized storage. Remember, these are good pictures that you may end up using in a different project. The beauty of scrapbooking is that you can always come up with a new perspective on events, a new theme to build your project around. If you keep your photographs organized, they’ll always be ready for the next project.

Getting your photograph collection in shape for scrapbooking is a three-step process. Find a clear space to work. Next—and this might be difficult—get rid of the bad photos. Then take the good photos and put them in order. Let’s take a look at each of these steps.

Before you even drag out the first box of photographs, clear a good-sized area in which to work. Getting organized is not going to get finished in an afternoon, so you need to find a place that you don’t have to clean up every day until you’re done. For example, if you have some space in a guest bedroom, that would be great. The floor of a busy hallway would not be so great.

The next step is to start going through all of your photos and mercilessly trashing the bad ones. I don’t mean the photos of people you don’t like. The photos I’m talking about are blurred, out of focus, too dark, too bright—in general, bad photos. Will this part be a struggle for you? Really? I mean, why are you keeping them? They are really of no use to anyone, so get rid of them.

Now that you’ve pared things down to the good photos, it’s time to start putting them in order. Chronological order, that is. If you can arrange photos in the order in which events occurred, that will help your scrapbook planning immensely. Start out by putting them into piles by decade if you have to. Then within each of those stacks, gather them up by year, and then in order within each year.

Once you have them organized, go get some archival photo storage boxes, put the photos inside and label each box. A lower cost alternative is to put your pictures in Ziploc bags and then inside a normal box. The plastic bags will protect your photos from air and from any acid content in the boxes you use.

By committing some space to organizing your photos, discarding the pictures no one wants to see, and safely storing the rest, you’ll be well on your way to some truly excellent scrapbooks. And even if you don’t ever get into scrapbooking, your photos will be nicely arranged and stored, accessible to everyone in the family who wants to relive some happy memories.