Since a new year means a fresh start, I've gathered my top tips to get that photo library under control, pared down and uber-organized. 

Whether you do it when you download the pictures from your camera or you do it once a week, force yourself to go through your pictures and trash the ones that didn't turn out. You'll save yourself the trouble of searching through hundreds of dud photographs and save lots of space on your computer's hard drive.

And while we're talking deletions: Once you download pictures from your camera card, delete them! Start with a fresh card every time. There's nothing worse than finding yourself faced with a Kodak Moment, only with no room on your memory card.

While it may be tempting to organize your photos by events, I highly recommend you start with dates. Organize folders using the heirarchy system of year and month. Then, within each month you can organize more specifically by event, subject or people. Trust me, in two years when you're searching for a specific picture, you're more likely to remember the date, than if you titled that folder of vacation pictures "Trip to Grand Canyon" or "Vacation 2012". 

There is nothing more heartbreaking than losing pictures of your loved ones during a hard drive crash or a toddler distractedly deleting photos instead of staying on that kid-friendly website. I thought it would never happen to me, but it did. And thankfully, my favorite photos were safe and sound online. Whether you upload to an online photo service like Picasa, Photobucket, or my personal favorite, flickr, make sure you also save them on a DVD, or better, a cloud service or external hard drive like the ones we recommend here.

Whether you use one of the ideas above or come up with something that works better for you, once you come up with a plan, stick with it. Next time you're scanning the archives for that favorite picture from summer vacation, you'll be so glad you did. -Molly