My life motto since having kids has been, "Done is better than perfect." Maybe there will be time for perfect some day (I won't hold my breath), but in the meantime this motto applies to just about everything, including making photo books.

Many of us start our parenting journey with Pinterest-worthy plans of documenting our kids' childhoods. We may even have special baby books and keepsakes from that first year of milestones. Maybe we even kept it up a second year. (Or maybe we never even got to our wedding album.) Then life happened and all our plans sort of fell apart.

If you're like me, despite your best intentions, you're a year (or a few) behind on printing photo books for your family. I don't have any magic remedies to check all the books off your list, but I do have a few tips to ease the backlog (and the mom guilt) a bit.

Stack of photo books featuring family vacations by Northern Virginia Photographer Nicole Sanchez

Choose an event instead of a whole year.

Like any big project, breaking it into pieces makes it more doable. You may have thousands of photos throughout a year. They're probably on multiple computers or multiple devices. It's too much to go through in one sitting. You have to break it up into manageable chunks. My favorite way to do this is to have special photo books for vacations or family visits. (Bonus: these make great gifts for family members.)

You could also do this by breaking the year up into sections. For my phone photos especially, I find that printing one or two months at a time is much more manageable than organizing a whole year. If you use a service like Chatbooks, you can set up an automated feed and print whenever you reach a certain number of photos.

Open photo book with pictures of family vacation by Nicole Sanchez Photography

Go date forward.

Start of with a win and go date forward rather than picking up where you left off with your last album. Maybe one glorious day you'll have time to go back and fill in the gaps, but for now just celebrate the small successes and work your way to the bigger ones. Start with a fun summer album and work your way through each season.

Embrace cloud storage and organization.

I use OneDrive to back up all my photos. The phone app automatically backs up all my mobile images to the cloud (and cleans up space on my phone), which makes me rest easier knowing my photos are safe in case I lose or damage my phone (like I just did while on vacation).

I can access these images from either my phone or my laptop when it's time to make a book. I also love that you can share folders as well. I have real-time access to all my husband's pictures and can add them to my own folders for albums.

Close-up of family vacation photo in a photo book by Northern Virginia Family Photographer Nicole Sanchez

Don't totally forgo digital.

Printing is really important. Having all these images collecting digital dust on your hard drive or your phone is a waste, but you don't have to shun digital altogether. One thing I love about using Lightroom to make my photo books is that I can easily create and save a PDF version to my hard drive. We've set up email accounts for our boys (don't get me started on my lofty plans of writing letters to my kids every birthday...) and I can send them the files as an added measure in case the hard copy books ever get lost or destroyed.

Variety of family photo books by Northern Virginia Family Photographer Nicole Sanchez

Ditch perfection and celebrate whatever you're able to accomplish.

I may have left off yearly albums after my oldest son's first year, but I have managed to print vacation and family visit books. Not only do they make great holiday gifts, but I love seeing the growing stack that each of my kids have in their closet. I keep one set for my husband and me that is on our bookshelf. Lately my oldest has added these albums to his reading rotation. The other night I walked by to hear my husband reading some of the captions from his first year. And it made all the work that goes into making these books worth it.

And if you haven't managed to print any books, don't despair. Back your pictures up and they'll still be there when you get around to it.

Nicole Sanchez Photography works with busy parents in Northern Virginia, Washington, DC, and Maryland to create stress-free photo sessions that take all the loving, fun, and chaotic moments of family life to make beautiful photos and films that families will love looking at year after year. Contact me today to start planning a custom photography experience that's perfect for your family.

I take a lot of pictures. (Maybe unnecessary to state. And maybe an understatement as well. ;-) I've worked out a pretty solid system for organizing most of my images on my computer using Lightroom. Having a system makes it easier to find my pictures when it's time to order prints or put together photo books (which I look forward to sharing in another post). The exception to my system is my phone pictures.

I've already written about the importance of backing up your pictures, including the ones on your phone. But what about getting them off your phone (where you may never look at them) and into your hands? I love the pictures I take with my DSLR and I love the photobooks I make with them. But there are so many moments from our life that I capture only with my phone. And these photos don't make it into my photobooks. At the most, I'm reminded of them by the Facebook or Google popups that tell me what I posted one or two or however many years ago. Otherwise, they live silently on my phone.

I've tried incorporating my phone images with my DSLR images on my computer. It's a workable solution, but it is time consuming to transfer the files. Also, while it's possible to take beautiful images with a camera phone, I haven't mastered that skill. Most of my phone pictures are snapshots and I prefer to keep them together with other snapshots rather than integrate them with my other images. So I needed an easy and quick solution to make sure my phone images and the memories they hold aren't forgotten.

Enter Chatbooks. I'd been seeing their ads on my Instagram feed for months and when they ran a summer sale a couple of months ago, I decided to try them out. Chatbooks is a phone app that compiles pictures from your phone into a cute 6x6 book that features one picture per page. They start at $8 a book for 30 pages. There are lots of great features to this service (including an automated series option and the ability to add captions and include dates and locations), but the main draw for me was the ability to collaborate with others. My husband takes a lot of pictures with his phone as well and I wanted to include both our photos. Once he downloaded the app, I sent him a code and he was able to begin adding to our book. Super easy.

One downside I found with Chatbooks was the lack of editing features in the app. Instead, I edited all the pictures I wanted to include in my book in the VSCO app and then saved them to my phone. It made the process a little longer than if I had just taken the photos as-is, but it still only took me a day's worth of of spare moments to compile a month's worth of photos for my book. Another downside for me was that the automated series feature seems to be restricted to use with Facebook or Instagram only. I was disappointed that I couldn't automate use of photos directly from my phone. That would be the ultimate convenience.

So I ended going with a custom book, which starts at 30 pages, and adding an additional ten pages for $1. With shipping, my books were about $10 each. For that price, the quality isn't bad, but I was disappointed in the discoloration on the cover once I received them. Perhaps it's more apparent because I used a black and white cover image, but the yellow tinge was pretty noticeable. I contacted Customer Service and they quickly shipped a replacement which was improved, although still not a true white. Ultimately, I think the summer heat may have reacted with the paper during shipment, so I'll try again to see if there's any difference.

Overall, I'm still happy with my books because the process was convenient and quick and now I have at least one month's worth of phone photos printed in something tangible that my son can look through. Bonus points that the books make good gifts for his grandmothers as well. :-)

Have you tried Chatbooks or any similar apps for printing phone photos? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!