📸 Preserve Memories: Quick Tips for Sorting Old Pictures

Foreign. Well, at least it's morning for me. I am in the process of setting my goals for the week. As you may have seen in my last video, we're moving. Yay. And I'm so excited. And we're in the process of downsizing, decluttering, and just really getting things prepped for move. As of recording this video, we are eight weeks out from moving, so we have lot to do. And one of the things that I wanted to make sure we did not do is move stuff that we really don't need to. I. We're. We're downsizing by a significant amount, but I want to make sure that we aren't just moving stuff and storing it because we don't want to go through it. So, yes, all of us go through this. So don't feel like, you know, people that you see, they have it all together just because their pantry is organized and their garage is organized or their kitchen. We all have stuff that we need to go through and declutter and work on. So I'm definitely working on mine over the next eight weeks. So what. What I did this week was I picked five different things to work on, and I grabbed three bins that I have not looked at in years, years and years. So I've got three bins. I have some Halloween costumes we don't want, and I have a rug that I am not going to be able to use at my new house. So my goal this week is to go through one container per day or one of those things a day, whether it's deal with the rug, it's a washable one. So I'll wash it, get it ready, post it for sale, or donate it, whatever I'm going to do with it. But I'll do that one day. I'll go through a container one day, three days this week, and then also donate or get rid of the Halloween costumes. So I want to make sure by the end of the week I've gotten through that. And if I can accomplish that along with everything else on my plate, that is great. Like right now, after this, I'm going to be teaching a workshop, working with some clients. So I've got other things to do. But I made sure and set this time aside this morning so I can go through one of those items. And this morning I picked a container to go through, and this is it. Now, this container has a label on top that says photo albums. So I know, number one, I could tell how old this label is. So I know how old these photo albums are. But for me, this can be dangerous because I tend to just start looking at them and not focusing on the task at hand, which is going through them. Because I love looking at old pictures. If it has something to do with my kids or maybe us as a childhood in my family, I could get lost forever and we just crack up looking at all the pictures. So I definitely want to look at these photo albums. If they're the ones I think they are, I don't think I'm probably going to keep them. What I want to do is go through a process of digitizing these old pictures. These are old, old pictures, Right. So making your memories digitized makes them so much more accessible. I never look at the pictures and memories that are inside these FOA albums. I just don't. I look at the more recent ones. I tend to do that. So by digitizing them, whether I want to create new albums, whether I just want to have an archive of them, I want to preserve them, I want to keep them for historical references, anything like that, going through and taking the time to pull them out of the albums and digitize them will make such a difference. And when it comes to digitizing, we have so many options today on what we can do. We can use a scanner. You can get a scanner. And the nice thing to do with that, what I've seen a lot of families do or friend groups, is buy one scanner and then each month it rotates from a different house. That way everybody's not buying a scanner and you get to reuse this, this device to scan your pictures and digitize them, and then it goes on to the next household the next time. And it's also way less expensive to do it that. So you can get a scanner, you can use your phone, there's a lot of apps now where you can actually scan your pictures and apps will help you digitize them. Or you can do. Probably what I'm going to do is I'm just going to get them, organize them, and then send them off to have somebody else digitize them. Because like I said, I've got eight weeks until moving this house and I do not have time to deal with this. And I want to make sure I get it done, start to finish. So what I'm thinking about doing today, so I'm going to go into this box and like I said, it says photo album. So I'm sure that's what's in here. And yes, these are old school photo albums. So those of you that know, know these are really old. So I'm going to go through them, and then what I want to do is sort them. Because one of the important things to do when you're looking at pictures like this, you know, if you have all these old school pictures, is what do you want to do with them? Do I. Do I want to give them to my kids? Do I want to put them in albums? Do I want to use them for crafts? What do you want to do with them? And I think that's super important because you might want to organize them by year, you might want to organize them by person, you might want to organize them by maybe you had a family reunion or you have a family reunion every year and you wanted to create, you know, some maybe piles and sort them by each of the family reunions. And then you could go digitize them and give them to everybody who went. I mean, there's so many things you can do once they're digitized. You got to figure out how you want to organize them. So what I'm going to do first is decide which ones do I want to keep. And for me, I have a feeling a lot of these I probably don't need to keep. There's probably a lot of duplicates and just ones that probably don't have as much meaning to me as they did maybe 20, 30 years ago when I created some of these. But I definitely want to go through and have a strategy on how to do that. So I need to make sure I'm quick. I make quick decisions. So I'll have some probably that are duplicates. Maybe they're not even good. So they'll go in the trash pile. Then I'll have some that I want to keep. And they're obvious. Like, you know, if I look at this picture or this picture is a picture of my niece and she's quite a bit small, smaller than she is now. Love you, Amanda. So I'm going to go through, find out what my keeps are, and then once I do that, then I'm going to sort them via whatever strategy I want to do. I generally like to keep things by years, so I'll probably try to organize mine by years. And then when I send it off to be digitized, I'll have all of the years. So I'll have 2000, 2001, 2002. And that way I have some resemblance of knowing where to find particular picture that I'm looking for. If I'm looking for my son's graduation from 2018, I'll know which year to go to. So anyhow, however you Want to organize them is up to you. But for me, I'll probably do it by year. We'll see as I get into it. But I think the first task at hand is deciding which ones I want to keep. Not being too emotional about it and not letting myself sit and get stuck on one particular memory because that's so easy to do. And a good thing to do is to get someone to help you. And don't get like. For me, if I was to get one of my sisters to help me, we would get nothing done. We would be laughing and talking about memories. So maybe getting someone to help you go through this process who isn't familiar with the memories or don't really know the people or have an interest, they can help you and keep you on task. That's really important. So I'm going to have to keep myself on task and I have a time limit because I've got to get to work after this. So I'm going to get started. So here's some negatives. I'm not sure I'll take the a time even to look at them. I might. We'll see. I'm just going to set those aside and make a pile. Okay. So first off, I'm finding some pictures that are blurry. These are pictures. I don't want some garbage. Here's some more negatives. Yep. And I'm going to go through. I don't even know what this is. This is a blurry picture of my sister. She wouldn't want. This is a dog that I don't know. This is somebody that I know. Here's a picture of a cloudy day. I really don't want this. So I'm just going to go through this process. Here's another blurry picture of my sister. This one's a little better. Family photo. So I could really sit here and look at this. But I know I want to keep it. So I'm just going to put it in a keep pile. Here's a picture of a Christmas tree that I probably won't keep. Here's a side picture of someone taking a picture for a family photo. I'll keep it, but I probably. I'll put it in this keep pile, but I probably won't keep it. I have a lot of pictures of a cat that I used to have. I have some that are really bad lighting and I really don't think I'm going to keep so quickly. Those are going into my toss pile. These are some pictures of the snow. I probably will not keep them. But I'll just put them in the keep pile for now. I'm going to do a second pass. Here's a picture from my first apartment that I moved into. And it's just them doing the landscaping because it was a brand new place. I don't need this. Here's some pictures. Here's a picture of Bart Simpson on an old tv. Don't need that. Don't know why I have it. But going. So just got to go through this process up. Here I am on a boat in Mexico on vacation. I'm going to keep this one. Here I am white water rafting. So my niece. So these are all good pictures I'm going to keep for now there. So I got through that initial pile. So now I'm going to go through this first album and let's see what it is. This. Let me just show you how bad, like this is. The shape that this stuff is in. This is not good. So this is great that I'm going through this because this stuff is so old. I mean, but this goes back to when I probably was in high school. We'll see. No, just out of high school. And yes, I may look really young, but I'm not. I'm only kidding. But yeah. So this stuff just needs to be tossed. So it's good that I'm going to take the time to preserve the memories that I want to. Okay, so here I go. Let's start looking. Okay. Yep. These are pictures that I don't want. And wow, these are really in here. So these are pictures that I don't want. In fact, I'm just going to leaf through here and see if there's anything I do want. There's hardly anything in this. Oh, let's see. There's a lot in here. Okay. This is from a memory from when I went on my first work trip. So I probably will keep these things. I will keep these. Don't even remember who these people are. Some of these pictures are really bad too. Just not a very good photographer back then. Here's a good picture of a friend's daughter that I'm going to pull and give to her because I think she would really love to have this. So I'm putting that in that pile. This is funny. Okay, that's a funny picture. Here is a picture of me going to Disneyland. I'll keep that one. And a friend of mine, so I'll keep those. I have a ticket in here as well from Disneyland. I don't know if I'll keep it, but I'LL just throw it there. Here's some pictures of a co worker from my first job, and it was a baby shower, so I have a lot of those pictures. But honestly, honestly, I'm not gonna keep them. I'm done. I went through one entire photo album, so this is empty. I kept what I wanted. I have my donate pile. And the rest of this is gonna leave. So now I'm on to the next one. I just have four to go. The rest of these are not going to be that easy. A lot of empty pages. So that's great news. Oh, my niece and nephew. I'm definitely going to keep that. If I hadn't gone through this, I would just be taking this and storing it for no reason. Yeah, this isn't pretty much an empty. There's just a few pages here that I need to go through. Otherwise, this book is empty. So I just have these to go through. Another book. Done. It's so old and cannot be reused. These pages are really aged and not doing well. So these are keeps. I'll take them out of this later. But I'm definitely going to keep those. So I have three more. This is from a trip that I went on in Mexico, and I did this right after I went to. Right after I graduated high school. So I think that there's some money in here, which is funny. I kept some of the pesos, and I think that. Okay, yeah, there's a couple pictures I want to keep. Some of these people I don't even remember, but I'll keep this picture. I do know what year it is, so that's good snorkeling in Mexico. So fun. Okay. Oh, some of these are so bad. They've got finger fingers in them. Or they're just really bad lighting. Really bad pictures. But I guess back then that's what we had. We didn't have the camera technology and the editing software that we do now. So I'll keep that. Here's a couple cute pictures I want to keep. Done another one. Done another one. Oh, boy. This is my graduation. So, yeah, these I definitely keep. Keep. These are keeps. Okay. A lot of these are keeps. I'm just going to take them out. The pages are just falling apart. So these I'll keep. Let's see. Empty pages. These I'll keep. These are all great family pictures. I don't know if I have. Have. Okay, this one. Oh, I do want a couple here. This one and this one. These are people from high school that I don't even remember. So, nope, not keeping Those. Oh here's my prom picture. So yes, prom picture. Oh my gosh, more prom pictures. Gotta love that. Here's my first car. I will show a close up of it. Of it if I can. But yes, my first car. More graduation family pictures, friends. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And look at, look at how bad this is. So yeah so like this is picture thankfully this is, this picture is fully intact and it's good as a part of my graduation with one of my friends. But the picture thankfully is intact. But it's good that I'm going through this because clearly these things have not been holding up. So there we go. I've got through another photo album and for today I just have one more left. So let's see. So here is something super funny. I will give you a. A close up but. But this shows how organized it was even when I was a kid. These pictures are labeled. I took the time. It looks like it was typed. May have been on a computer but these probably were typed where I have labels of the name of my dog. And I'll have to do a close up of that. Here's an old flower that I kept. I'll take a picture of that as well. But not going to keep that. And again this is another really old. Oh here's a family road trip we did. We drove across the country. This picture I'll keep class picture. So much fun. Oh gosh. Here's some old pictures of all my sisters. There's four of us and my mom. So here's the four girls and my mom. And let's see. It doesn't have a year on it but I bet you between all of us we can figure it out. Definitely keeping that. And this is my youngest sister. She was in sixth grade. Yes. And it has a year on it which is amazing. When we used to get our pictures developed sometimes they'd put the year on it. So it has that her name which I know that who that is is my sister Danielle. A Billy Idol record cover. So now you know what era I'm from. A picture of my mom from the beach. I want to keep that. So these are all keeps. So I'll put them here. I'll keep these two and I'll put a picture of my labeling. I'm to going not going to keep this flower. I wish I knew what it was from but it's really old and not looking very good. These are some school pictures. I don't know if I'll want them but I'm going to grab them. Just in case another really old, not in great shape photo album. But it preserved my picture, so I'm very thankful to it. So. But this is going so you guys. So I went through that entire. I went through this entire thing and this is my to go pile. These are all. This is all garbage. What I have left that I could even further break down and organize, but I won't do that because it'll take a long time for me to just rip these open and be super boring to watch. But I have all of these. These are all the pictures. So my next step is to get them and then sort them. And I probably will do by year. Still, as I mentioned earlier, I'll organize them by year. For now, what I'm going to do though is I'll pull them out and I'm going to store them in another bin because I have many bins like this. So I want to go through all of my bins before I send them off to get them digitized. But I will definitely digitize them because these are important to me. I love them and I don't have time to scan them or use or do that with a phone. So that's going to be my next step to get this, put it put away into a designated bin for loose pitchers that by the time I move it, I will definitely do it. By the time I move, I will send them off to get them digitized. So I hope that this inspires you to kind of grab a bin, grab a box. Whether you do one per day, one per week, just work your way through it. So I whittled this entire bin down to this and you can do that too. So I encourage you to set some goals for yourself. Tomorrow I'll be back with the next bin. I think it's going to be a little bit harder. I think it's like some more random memories, but I think it'll be more challenging. But that's okay. I'm up for. Up for it. I want to get through it. I want to preserve the memories and get rid of the stuff we just don't need. We don't need all this stuff weighing us down. So anyhow, I hope you're doing well. I'll see you soon. Bye.