Do You Hoard Photos on Your Phone? Here’s How to Stop

If you’re someone who meticulously stores only photos they value in tidy folders, we genuinely respect your efforts but can’t relate at all.

Let’s be honest though – most of us are guilty of having photos piling up in our phone albums because we’re either unnecessarily attached to them or too lazy to get rid of them. However, you’re not a lost cause! We’ve put together a few tips that will help you break out of the “photo hoarder” mentality. Keep on reading to find out how.

1. Acknowledge the problem

The first step to fixing a problem is accepting that it exists. Most of us are in denial about our photo hoarding tendency. That’s what leads to an escalation of the problem because we keep capturing and storing even more photos instead of first sorting through existing ones.

Say it out loud if you need to: I am a photo hoarder. Great, now that that’s out of the way, we can move towards resolving the problem.

2. Get rid of the Trash

The next step is to get rid of the excess photos on your phone. Most of them will fall in one of the following categories:

  • Screenshots taken of a product recommendation or recipe that you never got around to trying
  • Multiple duplicates of the same image – whether these are selfies, pictures of scenery or food (taking 10-20 photos of things was a fine move in the olden days, but those days are over)
  • Shared images that your friends and family send to you on messaging apps
  • Blurry images that you don’t recall taking but your phone storage definitely does!

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Once you’ve gotten rid of these photos, it’s time to take a closer look at the photos that are left. Now you have to make the tough call here – are these photos worth saving or not? To help you decide that, try answering the following questions for yourself:

Will I want to remember this story behind this photo? If the answer to this one is no, then the photo is definitely not memorable enough to save.

Is it an amazing photo? Are you proud of having captured that image? If yes – keep it, otherwise there’s probably little to no value in leaving it in your album.

3. Don’t become complacent in the future

Once you’ve managed to clean out your phone’s photo album, remind yourself to be vigilant in the future. Things can easily get out of hand once again if you don’t keep actively cleaning out your photo album periodically.

Ideally you want to delete any irrelevant photos right after taking them and only store the ones you like. However, if that’s not possible, set a reminder for yourself to review and delete unnecessary photos every couple of months.

4. Have an alternative to phone storage

For most people, phone photography is the norm which is why we end up storing lots of unnecessary photos on our devices. Investing in cloud storage can help free up storage space on your device and also keep your photos safe. There are many options for cloud storage, and you can also backup important contacts, documents and emails on it as well.

This is a helpful tip even if you shoot with a camera instead of your phone, especially if you’re prone to losing memory cards. You can backup data on a cloud or on an external hard drive.

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You could also email huge files that are important to yourself. This is an easy, low-tech route to make space on your device. Feel free to delete them from your handset with the reassurance that Gmail is keeping them safe.

Conclusion

No matter the current space on your device, you can always get out of the photo hoarding rabbit hole. Take the steps above and remember, it’s a lot easier to maintain than clean out your device every couple of years. We, therefore, recommend scheduling reminders to clean every three months. Also, take up the habit of removing subpar images immediately after taking them. The power is in your hands, dear ex-photo hoarder.