10 for 2010 - Heritage Making New Year’s Resolutions - #5 and #6

By: Brenda Kruse

5. SCAN THE SCHOOL PAPERS, ARTWORK & MEMENTOS.
I know this is a lot like #4 but it’s more current and the problem is compounded by my children’s creative efforts at this age. I love that they want to color, draw, paint, write and such both in and out of school but the volume of paper is overwhelming me. I plan to schedule a monthly “Scan Saturday Session” where I will choose the best to scan, take a picture of them holding the larger or non-scannable ones, and digitize them right away.
After I label the folder on my computer and upload them into my HM Studio albums, I’ll know that these are preserved pieces of their childhood that they (and I) will treasure more in years to come. Best of all, I can pitch the originals with NO guilt! Sure, I’ll still keep a pizza-box worth of special papers for nostalgic reasons but I won’t be as heartbroken if something happens to those pieces of art, writings, and the like.

6. A LITTLE LABELING GOES A LONG WAY.
While I’ve waffled on my views of both writing and date stamps on photos, the sheer point is…it’s nice to know who, what, when, where, why and how for photos. You think you’ll remember but you don’t. And it doesn’t take long to forget the details either. I need to find a consistent way to capture those stories that are part of the pictures and put them into a format I can easily find, use and keep safe. I tend to have too many places and processes for recording those…some of the stories are written on photo captions and descriptions in my online photo albums. Others are journaled on email, Facebook or my blog. Some are scribbled notes on the calendar or in the kids’ quotes journal I keep.
I need to be more on top of preserving the priceless reasons behind the photos…not just the pictures themselves. Although the famous quote says a photo is worth 1000 words, that doesn’t ring true when you are facing a pile of old photos from your heritage that you can’t identify and the people who could tell you those stories are no longer here or able to share them with you. In the end, I’d like to have at least 100 words for every photo so those snippets could help me piece together “the rest of the story” as famed radio personality Paul Harvey often said on air.

From blog.heritagemakers.com