Just face the fact that you have to set aside a time in your schedule to manage your data. You will need time to sort, organize, store and definitely backup your data. If you don't, then you will risk losing your digital data upon the occasion that malware, ransomware, natural disaster or a thief captures your data. Are you ok with losing everything? Most of us aren't and it would be devastating, especially to lose our photos. You can replace a lot of things that you lose or have stolen but you can't replace memories that were preserved in photos. You must set aside a weekly, biweekly or at least monthly time to do your downloads, organizing and backing up to keep up with all your ever-growing data!
Most of us have our files and photos saved on our desktop or laptop computers and some only have them on a device, such as a tablet or phone. I recommend that everything be on your computer as a first line of managing those files and also to organize them. It is a lot easier, in my opinion, to use a keyboard and a mouse and a larger screen to manage the files, then it is to use a smaller screen with just your finger maneuvering through the process. However, more importantly, is that your phone can easily be stolen and isn't a safe place to store your data. I recommend you download your data, specifically photos, to your computer for the first step in backing it up.
Once your files are on your computer, how do you manage or organize them? You create folders, just like you would in a physical filing cabinet. Envisioning your digital files in comparison to physical ones in a filing cabinet will probably help you grasp how to manage the data. Let's start with the main folder called "Pictures" - this would obviously be where most people store their photos - then, "Documents" would be where most people store their other files. Under each of these, you would create folders with various categories and this is personal preference, but for example, I have mine organized as such: Google Backups; Extended Family; Weight Loss; Inspiration and Ideas; Graphics; Blog Pics; MISC, etc. Inside each of these folders, I further break it down into categories. For instance, for Google Backups, which is my downloaded copy of Google Photos, I prefer to go by folders of years and then months. This makes it easy for me to find the pictures and videos I took during a certain year or month. For Extended Family, I use categories such as: My Family and Husband's Family - and from those subfolders, I further break it down into Older, Old, and vacations or reunions. I think this way of organizing pictures will help my children in future years find whatever they are looking for.
For documents, I use categories such as: Finances; Homeschool: Christian: Articles; eBooks; Manuals; Recipes: Songs, etc. Again, these categories have subfolders to organize even further. What if you have files that you just don't have time to sort? Simply make a folder on your desktop called "Sort" and throw the files in there and set aside a time to go through each file and organize it where it goes. Also, make sure you regularly keep up with clearing out your downloads folder in the same way.
Now, that we know how to manage, organize and have a first layer of storage of our data, let's talk about backups!