How to Organize Your Emails, Letters, and Photos

Keeping 2 years worth of emails, letters, and photos organized is no easy task. Here are some tips for getting, and staying, organized.

Step 1: Have a plan.

What would you like to accomplish? Would you like everything grouped by sender? Chronological order? Letters here, emails there, and photos somewhere else?

*I recommend keeping everything in the order it is received. It's easier and tells a story at the end.

Step 2: Decide on a system

Where will you be keeping everything. There are a few options:

• Paper: You can print everything out and store a physical copy. Pros: it's accessible to everyone. Cons: it's time consuming and requires a lot of paper, ink, and other supplies.
• Computer Storage: You can store everything in a designated file somewhere on your computer. Pros: It's convenient since most correspondence is via computer these days. Cons: only accessible on that computer, also emails and paper letters can be difficult to store this way.
• Email: You can designate files in your email and store everything online. Pros: Everything is online so it's accessible from any computer. Cons: paper letters are difficult to store online.
• External Hard Drive: You can move everything to a thumb drive. Pros: Your correspondence is portable. Cons: Moving everything can be time consuming and external hard drives are subject to storage limits.
• A Marvelous Work: Of course, we unashamedly offer a service that organizes everything for you. Simply forward everything you want to save to your missionary's personalized email address and we'll compile and format everything into a book. Curious? Learn More!

*I recommend storing everything online. It's the most convenient and the most accessible.

Step 3: Adopt a few tactics

Here are a few tricks for keeping your emails, letters, and photos neat and tidy:

• Choose 1 storage location and put everything there. For example, after you send an email, go in and move your sent email to the storage location. That way you don't have to search for sent and received emails.
• Have your missionary forward any emails, letters, or photos from others that he wants included in the mission book.
• Delete anything you don't want to save for the book. Having a hard time deleting it? Maybe it should go in the book.
• If you are going to save paper letters with everything else, scan them into your computer using a home scanner. Or, if you prefer, you can type them in.

Step 4: Be consistent, or don't, it's totally up to you.

If you do these things regularly, it will take less time. Or, if you don't want to worry about it, choose a time every transfer, or every few months and get everything in order. If you wait until the end of 2 years, it can be very overwhelming.

Step 5: Have an exit strategy.

What do you plan to do with all of that saved up correspondence? Of course, we at A Marvelous Work recommend making it into a book. Stay tuned for my next post on how to make a mission book.