Save Last Month's Photos - Your Weekly Checklist
With all the tasks involved in saving your memories, there’s one habit that pays the biggest dividends over time: saving last month’s photos every month. This simple but powerful routine gives you a tidy archive of your favorite moments from each month—and makes it easier to create a yearly photo book, calendar, or holiday card when the time comes.
Let’s assume most of your photos live on your phone. Now what? There are a few ways to get this done, and like with anything in the photo world, there’s no one-size-fits-all method. But whichever you choose, the goal is the same: get your best photos into a safe, easy-to-find spot each month.
Your Monthly Photo-Saving Checklist
✅ Pick a regular day each month to do your photo save. (Put it on your calendar!)
✅ Review your photos from the past month and delete junk photos – duplicates, repetitive, blurry shots, accidental screenshots.
✅ Save the important family memories in a folder on your computer or in a cloud storage site. (We recommend Forever Permanent Storage for a variety of reasons - but substitute with your cloud storage if you prefer.)
** We don't recommend relying on your phone to be the home of your family photos. There's simply too many moving parts to saving family memories that makes this challenging and risky for long term photo preservation. **
HERE'S HOW: Manually Save Photos to a Folder on Your Computer
After deleting all junk photos, connect your phone to your computer, select the photos you wish to save, and copy them to a designated folder (ex. 2025-07 July Photos)
Pros:
- You stay in control of what’s saved and its in your possession on your computer
- Doesn’t require ongoing subscriptions or cloud plans
- Folders are easy to access for future projects
- Simple to back up to an external hard drive. (Also, for added protection, you can upload the photos to Forever or another cloud storage site).
Cons
- Requires you to remember to do it
- Can feel tedious without a routine
- Viewing photos in folders not as enjoyable and not easily shared
- Photos aren’t backed up unless you remember to back them up to an external hard drive and cloud storage site.
HERE'S HOW: AUTO SAVING YOUR PHOTOS WITH FOREVER (and many other cloud sites can do this as well)
Install the FOREVER App on your phone to automatically upload all new photos to your FOREVER account. Then once a month, log in, delete the junk, and create an album for the month.
Pros:
- No need to remember to upload
- FOREVER guarantees permanent photo storage (Click here to learn more)
- Easily organized into a monthly folder once inside the app
- Enjoyable app to view photos
- Create photo books and other print projects with your photos
- Great long-term solution for photo preservation
Cons:
- You still need to go in and clean things up monthly deleting the screenshots, repetitive photos and others not worthy for saving
- Storage requires a one time fee for the amount of space you wish to purchase
- Watching video requires a streaming plan
Whichever method you choose, consistency is key!
This monthly habit only takes a short amount of time and helps you build a reliable photo archive—without the end-of-year overwhelm.
Get Help!
If you’re struggling with where to start or need some guidance in managing your family photos, both print and old, I have many resources for helping people. Watch a video I uploaded recently to learn more.
Click here to be added to our weekly e-newsletter where I send a new checklist or system each week to help you on your photo saving journey.
