5 Beautiful Reasons to (Finally!) Unload Those Photos Clogging Your Phone

Two questions for you:

1. How many photos do you have on your smartphone? 1,000? 5,000? 10,000? More?

2. When was the last time you looked through the pictures on your phone?

Most people collect a sizable number of photos as years pass, but a lot of time, these images end up sitting on our phones, mostly forgotten about and definitely underappreciated. Wouldn’t it be nice to use these pictures in a way that they can be seen and relived on a regular basis, instead of dooming them to lonely lives in the cloud?

If your answer is yes, there are several online services available that make it easy to transform digital photos into professional-grade photo books, recipe collections, calendars, and more. The following are just some of our favorite ways to turn family memories into beautiful, useful keepsakes.

Stop me if this sounds familiar: You have the urge to make Aunt Jan's signature pecan pie, yet you can't find the card it’s scrawled on. You get increasingly frustrated as you try to sort through all the ragtag recipes you've collected over the years, before simply throwing in the towel and making something else.

This struggle is too real, so why not condense, organize, and beautify your recipe collection into a homemade cookbook, complete with all the photos you’ve taken of your best culinary masterpieces? Using a service like Blurb or Cookbook Create, you can turn your family's favorite recipes into a custom cookbook using pre-formatted templates that will make it look professional.

Once you’ve condensed your recipe clutter into one lovely book, you can simply consult the table of contents, find Aunt Jan’s pie, and get to baking. Plus, it makes a wonderful gift for family members.

Whether you keep photo prints in a box in the closet or, like we mentioned, store all your images on your smartphone, chances are you don't regularly go through these pictures to relive the happy times. Your memories deserve better than that!

It's no surprise that Artifact Uprising has become such a popular service in recent years, as it allows you to put all these wonderful photos and stories into an absolutely stunning coffee table book. There are variety of photo book styles available, as well as endless customization options, so you’re sure to be smitten with the end result.

Not into photo books? Services like Snapfish and Shutterfly make it easy to create a variety of personalized mementos using your favorite photos. You can get just about anything imaginable from these handy websites, including greeting cards, phone cases, coffee mugs, blankets, magnets, clocks, notebooks, and ornaments. It really is as easy as uploading the photo to get going on your project.

If you prefer to store recipes in a digital format so you can cook from your smartphone or tablet, there are a variety of apps that can help you digitize and organize your favorite recipes. For one, the Paprika Recipe Manager is available for just about every type of electronic device, and it allows you to add your own recipes or import your favorites from the web. You can also use this app to create grocery lists and follow along with recipes as you’re cooking.

Another popular option is home cook-friendly sites like Food52 (oh, hello!) and BigOven, where you can save family recipes in one place. You can take photographs of your own recipes and import them into your collection, and you can also follow friends and discover new dishes from the huge community of users.

You can look at cherished photos every day when you turn them into a calendar. We love the idea of creating a personalized calendar to hang on the wall, and services like Mixbook have some extremely cool templates that will ensure you never miss a birthday or holiday. You can even add cute grid photos and stickers to your design.

If you prefer a desk calendar, be sure to check out the custom photo calendars from Pinhole Press and Artifact Uprising, which also offer a slew of modern designs.

How do you create family keepsakes? Share your favorite tools with us below!