Focus on your Favorites
- patsikugler
- Jan 5
- 3 min read
Clear camera roll clutter and focus on what matters.
It's amazing to me how quickly I can capture any moment, any day at any time. I am from the generation of Mom's that carried the camera and equipment with me EVERYWHERE! The film camera I used had the feature of adding the date the photo was taken down in the corner and I thought I had died and gone to heaven! See, I'm a chronological sorter.
Fast forward to my digital camera, DSLR, days. SD cards, telephoto lens, tripod and rechargeable batteries were my constant companions. I took photos of everyone's everything and shared with photos with friends, athletes, practical strangers by exchanging emails when I captured something I wanted to share.
And now, today, I have my iPhone and can take pictures of EVERYTHING my heart desires. I screenshot. I 'save as.' I take a burst because I don't want to miss a smile.
AND I HAVE THOUSANDS OF PHOTOS - 10's of thousands actually. I really dislike deleting, because, well, you just never know.....
It's not the amount of storage space they take up that is driving me to want to Focus on my Favorites. (Although I really don't want to be wasting $$ on cloud storage plans that I may not need and I don't need to be leaving a carbon footprint by clogging up cloud servers with forgotten recipe screenshots.)
It's that I know that my photo capturing habits are not going to lighten up anytime soon, so fast forward 5 years and 200,000 more photos in my camera roll..... Will I really want to sort through it all then? Do I want my kids to have to scroll through lots of irrelevant clutter to find the key photos that show what is most important to me - what defines my legacy?
No.
So, even though I know i won't be perfect at it, what if I spend 15 minutes every so often using the tools of my Photo App to help me clear out what I don't want and indicating what I do?
Enter the "Focus on Your Favorites" tracker.
search a date in your phone
scroll through what shows up - maybe 0, maybe a few, may 178
FAVORITE the best - you don't have to make decisions between the 21 photos you took of the kids in front of the tree and delete (did I mention I dislike deleting?) SIMPLY FAVORITE the ones you REALLY like
trash the quick photo you snapped of your parking space at IKEA or the shot of the pantry item you wanted your family member to grab at the grocery store.
Cross off that date on your tracker - it can be today, it can be any day. Just cross it off.
Can you even imagine? In one years time you really can get a handle on your phone's camera roll! Which means in 2026 you won't have to sort through it all. You will just be doing maintenance.
And with all those "favorited" photos? You can create a quick album or slideshow to share and enjoy.
It's already past January 1st - so you don't have to worry about being behind according to the calendar. Just print the tracker and grab your phone. Get to work, one photo at a time!
