I should have finished my spring cleaning by now, but my windows remain unsqueegeed, my top shelves undusted. And while looking at the junk drawers waiting to be sorted, I started to ask myself the tough questions: What about the digital disorder that's messing with my virtual feng shui? It was time to get my sprawling and neglected digital photo collection under control -- a task I've been putting off since the heyday of the Zip disk.

To find the perfect solution, I canvassed professional photographers, photo editors and amateur enthusiasts. The pros pointed me toward software that was robust but too complicated for my needs. Even Type A friends admitted defeat. One described her system as 'buying bigger and bigger hard drives.'

There must be a better way. I thought maybe if I categorized everything -- the equivalent of buying pretty containers for my household clutter -- it would make me feel better. I tried my hand at tagging -- assigning keywords to images so you can search for them later. But thinking of words to describe all of the events in your life is exhausting. I gave up.

The good news is that even a halfhearted attempt at organizing my photos made my collection manageable. All photo organizing software can sort images by date. The better ones can recognize faces. That got me in the vicinity of any photo I wanted to find.

Here are the no-nonsense steps I took to get there. Could the approach be more comprehensive? Absolutely. But this is a method for the harried. And, besides, memories are best stumbled upon, not searched for.

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