My favorite Shutterfly hack for new moms!

I’m so excited to share with you my favorite money-saving Shutterfly hack for new moms.  In a span of one generation, access to photo memories went from dishing out ridiculous amount of cash to have your children sit at the local superstore and praying you get one good shot to handheld devices that allow us virtually unlimited access to photos of our kids.  But what do we do with all of those photos?  In an age of photo overload, I started searching for a way to save my favorite photographs in one place where I could easily view them.  Scrapbooking, although beautiful and personal, was way too time-consuming for me.  I couldn’t keep up.  Printing them all out was just too space-consuming, expensive, and I honestly never went back to look at them.  So, I kept searching.  And that’s when I found the golden ticket to safekeeping my favorite digital memories.  It took me a couple of years to get the hack perfected to get the best bang for my buck, but I’m hoping to save you a little time and money today by giving you all the inside scoop from my trial and error process. 

Inside Tip: Make sure you read through STEP SIX because it’s the HUGE MONEY SAVER!

Step One:  First off, download the Shutterfly app.

Step Two: In the Shutterfly app, designate an album for that year.  I personally like to start mine the day after each birthday and run it through the next birthday.  So, if you are a new mom, the “Year One” album would run from birth (or pregnancy) through the first birthday.  “Year Two” would start the day after the first birthday and run through the second birthday, and so on.

Step Three: In your camera roll on your phone, set up an album where you can drop all of the photos that you want to save for your Shutterfly book.  I currently have an iPhone, so I drop all of mine into my “favorites” album.  Sometimes I drop more than I actually want to use, but I can always delete some from the Shutterfly book.

Step Four: Find a regular schedule that works for you to upload the photos into your Shutterfly app.  Mine tends to be sporadic, but I do try to at least get it done at least once a week.  It’s pretty quick if you commit to doing it frequently.  I’ll make sure that I’m in a good wifi area, open my Shutterfly app, and upload all the of the new photos in my favorites album to my designated Shutterfly album.  In good wifi, it’s a matter of seconds, or minutes, depending on how many adventures we had that week.

Step Five: Once a month, take a small bit of time and work on dropping your album photos into your Shutterfly book/project.  I use the same format every year, a hardcover 12×12 book with a “modern black” template.  The first time you set the project up will take you a small bit of time because you will need to choose a book type, size, and template, but once you have it set up, your monthly work on this project will be minimal.  Here’s two key notes: 1) DON’T be intimidated by the price…my money saving hack is down below.  2) DO try to make sure that you work on this monthly or else you will end up like me my first couple of years – spending all day on a weekend trying to get it done before the deadline of the big sale!  So, in this step, you’re taking all of the photos that you uploaded throughout the month and dropping them into your project and organizing them.  Shutterfly does have a feature where they can drop your photos into the album for you, but I’m way too much of a control freak for that!

Step Six: Here’s the BIG ONE! So, your kid has just had his/her birthday.  You just wrapped up the album for the year.  You have the cover designed, the special note inside the first page, and the remaining pages full of all of your special memories for the year.  Now….WAIT.  Just SIT ON IT! I promise you that it will be worth it.  Every few months, Shutterfly offers a big deal, usually only for a few days, called the “Unlimited Free Photo Book Pages” sale.  It gives you all of your extra pages in your album for free! This is a HUGE part of the expense of the Shutterfly albums and to give you a glimpse of how much money this could save you, it dropped the price of just one of my books from the $160 range to around $40-45.  Don’t forget to combine that with the Shutterfly code for “free shipping!” Just by waiting for this sale, I saved over $500 on a large order of four photo album books that I completed this year!

Well, there you have it.  If you’re a new mom and you need a quick and easy way to save your favorite photos, while also getting the best bang for your buck, follow these steps to make it a smooth and less time-consuming process, then wait for the BIG SALE before you print them.  This has truly been one of my favorite mom hacks for years!  Enjoy!!

Thanks for reading and drop us a COMMENT with your favorite mom hack for saving memories!