Have you accumulated boxes of old photos from every holiday, vacation and birthday party attended? After a lifetime, what do you do with them?
Consider something called Life-Storying.
Life-Storying is a customized process of audio and video recordings. You can do it yourself by copying your special photos electronically onto CDs or hard drives — or try your hand at scrapbooking. Also services now exist that will take all your photos, slides, and videos and do it for you.
Once you get your precious photos safe in the format of your choice, one of the best ways to share them with family members and friends across the country is with social media. You can post your photo and then add a story to go with it. Or just identify who is in the photo, especially if it’s of grandpa as an unrecognizable boy or maybe even grandpa’s mother and father. Facebook is a great social media tool for feeling close to family who live far away or who you never get to see.
Not only can you share old memories, Facebook will also remind you of long ago posts so you can enjoy those photos and stories again. Also, Twitter and Instagram are easy programs for sharing photos and videos. Your children will love you even more for your great family posts.
If you don’t feel like digitizing your photos, make sure you at least keep them in a archival-quality box that is acid-free and not made of cardboard. Keep the box stored in a cool place – not the garage or attic. And handle them with kid-gloves…literally. Wearing gloves with keep off not only fingerprints but also oils and perspiration.
But to help family members to be able to identify the photos in years to come, a photo album or scrapbook would provide spaces to write descriptions and stories .
Getting your photos and videos arranged and safe for future generations can be a fun project. But you may be someone who appreciates a great end result and not this particular time-consuming journey. Let SeniorMoves.org take care of it for you.