The 5,000 Photo Rule

How many photos do you need in your photo library?

I know I don't need to take 55,000 photos (and growing) with me for the rest of my life.

At one point that's how many photos I had in my iCloud Photo Library. My spouse and I have been sorting our library with GetSorted, and in that activity I had to think of two methods we found when uncluttering our home.

The first method is the question of "If this broke down, would I buy it again?". If not, maybe you can dispose of it.

The second method is the question of "when I die, would I be happy to lay the burden of sorting out my stuff on my loved ones?". That's also known as Swedish Death Cleaning.

I'm not saying both of these apply to sorting out your photo library. However, when you die, your photo library will continue to exist. And your loved ones will want to have access to it. And then, do you want to offer them a "Best Of" selection of your life, or a general database of any photo you've ever taken?

Another method, which is the point of this thing, is to work towards an arbitrary number. That's harder with physical objects so that didn't come to mind when we uncluttered our home.

Maybe you only want to have a maximum of 5,000 photos. Or you only want to keep 500 photos for each year of your life.

I want to stress though that you be careful throwing out pictures that elicit warm thoughts and memories. So even though you might not meet the number you set, it's likely more important you keep stuff that is important to you. Not because you can to meet an arbitrary number.