A Simple $5.99 Hack to Organize Your SD Cards

On my 27th birthday, I made the biggest mistake of my entire life. My wife held me on our apartment’s crappy millennial grey floor as I cried my eyes out.

Lying next to me on the floor was my Sony A7III. Over the course of the past month that little Sony had filled 2 SD cards with the most important things I had ever recorded. My wedding, bachelor party, honeymoon, and relocation to Arizona.

But that morning I opened up my hard drive folders to discover that I didn’t properly back up my wedding footage, and I was sitting on the floor looking at the camera that had just formatted the wrong SD Card.

Managing SD Cards has been a necessary evil throughout my creative process. As someone who loves documenting life beautifully: ingesting photo & video files is a routine ritual. I hear the same click when I take an SD Card out of my camera, and I send that same mini prayer off to heaven hoping no files are corrupted.

After thousands of SD Cards ingested, I had learned my lesson on the worst SD Card I could have possibly formatted. Organize that dang pile of SD Cards on your desk!

A few years later I was running a small marketing department, and we all had our own little piles of SD Cards we were trying to keep organized. There was no way in hell I was going to make the mistake of formatting the wrong SD Card again, but tight deadlines and limited resources for new storage made it seem like history was doomed to repeat itself.

Version 1 was a series of post-it notes. I slapped a yellow sticky note labeled “IN PROGRESS” on my friend Josh’s desk and said “Don’t you dare move this until we have this video uploaded to YouTube”.

That sticky lasted for just long enough to get covered in dirty fingerprints and dust from our adventures out shooting motorcycles. So a month after my first iteration, I put in a little extra work and slapped down a laminated copy printed on cardstock.

This card has sat on my desk for nearly 5 years. I have made multiple copies to give to friends, employees, and for my home office. It’s a simple system, but it saves me from making the same mistake I made formatting my wedding footage.

I’ve listed a Free Downloadable SD Card Desk Organizer on 52Weeks.com so you can get your desks organized too. These are relatively easy to design in Photoshop, but I figured I would list the design online just in case someone wanted a quick solution to their unorganized SD Card pile. Version 3 of my printable includes a few styles to choose from, with a quick set of instructions to guide you through your little weekend project.

If you are looking for a more sleek desk solution to SD Cards, we released an aluminum version of this product with laser engraved dots for your own creative workflow. I am partial to the Ingest → In Progress → Format workflow, but these could be used for a nice A Cam → B Cam → C Cam setup. I keep a couple around so that if I need to clearly organize multiple important projects I can be extra careful about my SD Card Management.

Here's to routine creation! I will spend many more years dealing with SD Cards, so I might as well find an elegant solution to the unorganized pile of SD Cards on my desk.

Instructions for How To Create The Printable SD Card Organizer 

1. Download the Printable SD Card Organizer (Free) on 52weeks.com

2. Open up the PDF on your computer and select Print.

Note: A normal Inkjet printer should print these just fine. I’ve used office printers, photo printers, and home inkjet printers to make these over the years.

3. Run to a local office supply store or order on amazon the following materials:

   1. 8.5”x11” Cardstock

   2. 4”x6” Self-Seal Laminating Pouches. You can also buy larger 8.5”x11” sheets to laminate all 3 at the same time. Go for whatever is cheaper.

While I am confident in everyone’s ability to wield a pair of scissors – the self-seal laminating pouches are a little wonky to figure out on the fly. Here is a brief video walking you through that process: