It's no secret that I take a lot of pictures. I can't help it. Capturing the moment is something that I love doing, and even more, love having. It's so fun flipping through photos of the past and remembering that day with a better visual than my mind can give me. I know that a lot of my days would be forgotten had I not documented the moments. It scares me how you can completely forget entire days that you have lived! It's kind of like getting in the car and arriving to your destination with no recollection of the in between. Without photos, that would be me with a lot of my days!
Now that we live in the "digital age" where everything is electronic, I miss having hard copies of pictures. Remember the days when you dropped your film off at the photo shop and waited in anticipation for days to see the results? That was so fun and so exciting. I loved it! And then digital cameras entered our lives and all of our memories are at the mercy of a computer and (hopefully) external hard drive.
Me, being the cynic that I am, (okay, I'm not really that big of a cynic, but I am toward certain things ... like technology), am terrified of computers crashing and my life memories being swept away with it. Deleted. Gone forever. I get nauseas just thinking about it. So, when Levi was born, I set out to print off our pictures every month. I wanted to have the hard copies as a back up, and also, I just prefer them. I love going to my parents and grandparents houses and looking at old pictures. I want my children and grandchildren to do the same when they grow up and come back to my house.
Levi's entire first year is printed off and in two (gigantic) photo albums. After his first birthday came and went and he started walking, life has been a busy whirlwind. I hadn't printed photos off in months and when I finally did it, the thought of organizing them into photo albums was pretty daunting. I didn't have the time or the gumption to do it. So, I set out to find a more space efficient, better way to hold our memories.
And I found it.
And I love it.
This box is a life saver. I found it at Hobby Lobby (of course) and it is nothing short of genius!
It comes with 16 little photo cases that hold approximately 150+ photos a piece!
I bought some sticker labels and organized them by month/activity. Some cases have several months combined and I like to write key words on there so if I ever need to find a picture, I can just look at the front of each case. So great!
This box above holds all the photos from June 2010 to present. I have two empty cases left before getting a new box and March's pictures are in the mail, so I may be making a trip to Hobby Lobby in the near future!
I just wanted to share this little treasure with you guys because I love it so much. It has solved all of my photo storage woes!
So now I've got to know ...
What do you do with your pictures? Keep them on the computer? External HD? Print them out? How often? Scrapbook? Storage Box?
Now that we live in the "digital age" where everything is electronic, I miss having hard copies of pictures. Remember the days when you dropped your film off at the photo shop and waited in anticipation for days to see the results? That was so fun and so exciting. I loved it! And then digital cameras entered our lives and all of our memories are at the mercy of a computer and (hopefully) external hard drive.
Me, being the cynic that I am, (okay, I'm not really that big of a cynic, but I am toward certain things ... like technology), am terrified of computers crashing and my life memories being swept away with it. Deleted. Gone forever. I get nauseas just thinking about it. So, when Levi was born, I set out to print off our pictures every month. I wanted to have the hard copies as a back up, and also, I just prefer them. I love going to my parents and grandparents houses and looking at old pictures. I want my children and grandchildren to do the same when they grow up and come back to my house.
Levi's entire first year is printed off and in two (gigantic) photo albums. After his first birthday came and went and he started walking, life has been a busy whirlwind. I hadn't printed photos off in months and when I finally did it, the thought of organizing them into photo albums was pretty daunting. I didn't have the time or the gumption to do it. So, I set out to find a more space efficient, better way to hold our memories.
And I found it.
And I love it.
This box is a life saver. I found it at Hobby Lobby (of course) and it is nothing short of genius!
It comes with 16 little photo cases that hold approximately 150+ photos a piece!
I bought some sticker labels and organized them by month/activity. Some cases have several months combined and I like to write key words on there so if I ever need to find a picture, I can just look at the front of each case. So great!
This box above holds all the photos from June 2010 to present. I have two empty cases left before getting a new box and March's pictures are in the mail, so I may be making a trip to Hobby Lobby in the near future!
I just wanted to share this little treasure with you guys because I love it so much. It has solved all of my photo storage woes!
So now I've got to know ...
What do you do with your pictures? Keep them on the computer? External HD? Print them out? How often? Scrapbook? Storage Box?
I too love actually having the photos in my hand. But with the digital camera and now blogging, I just download and then upload to blogger and leave it at that. I can't remember the last time I actually printed out pictures! It's terrible. I have actually lost photos because I never backed them up or printed them and it is a sickening feeling. What I do now is upload all of my photos I have taken onto the Walgreens website. I can access it from anywhere. I label each upload by the month and year. This way I don't have to worry about losing them. I actually just received an email from Walgreens for 75 prints for $9.99. I plan on doing that sometime this week!
ReplyDelete-April
haha love this post! I also take TONS of pictures and my husband was so fed up with the picture mess that he bought me those exact same picture holders! He put them in front of me and was like, "here, clean up your picture mess." I love mine!
ReplyDeleteThat is a fabulous idea! I always like to have everything saved several ways JUST IN CASE! I have scanned most of our hard copy pics and I need to print the digital only ones. I love this idea because currently I have a ton of pics sitting in a tote lol. I figured this was better than laying around everywhere but I need to put this on my to-do list! I love it thanks for the idea!
ReplyDeleteNot only am I afraid of technical failures I am afraid of fires too. I save them a few different ways too. 1. I hardly ever erase them from the memory cards. I will erase the ones I don't like but the others just get to live there forever. 2. I put many on Facebook for safe keeping. I even scanned old pics to put on there in case my old school "negitives" catch on fire with my house and photos. I also refuse to delete my myspace just because I have so awesome pictures on there too. 4. Last but not least I download them to my computer too. I love my pics so I put them in so many places that nothing short of the ENTIRE planet blowing up could keep them from me.
ReplyDelete*Haha. I forgot #3. I print them out and keep them in a box.
ReplyDeleteI keep them on my computer and in facebook photo albums, because you never know if someone is going to steal your computer...true story :(
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ReplyDeleteOh boy, I can't believe you printed out all those pictures. I take LOTS of pictures, but I only print out the ones I'm going to frame. I save all my photos on Shutterfly.com.
ReplyDeleteI love having prints too! I saw something similar at Costco, called my mom and told her to go buy some for her house ... all of our albums were ruined after a hurricane years ago, and we were able to save the pictures, but they've just been sitting in shoe boxes since then! Great idea :)
ReplyDeleteI like making photo books. They're faster and cheaper than scrapbooks and I actually like them better than a scrapbook or a tangible picture because they're all the photos I love in an order that makes sense to me. I've used shutterfly, snapfish, blurbook, and adoramapix. Best quality definitely goes to adoramapix but they have a 76 page limit that frustrates me. runner up is blurbook, and shutterfly/snapfish tie for decent books at awesome prices.
ReplyDeleteI NEED THIS.
ReplyDeleteSO smart! If I can find a place in our tiny house to store it, I'm heading to Hobby Lobby to pick one up! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteCurrently, right now I store all my photos on my external hard drive. Its the easiest and fastest way to back them up. Although, I love to have actual print out photos still... nothing beats holding a real photo in your hand!
ReplyDeleteCabin Fever in Vermont
I am a big scrapbooker. It is a huge creative outlet for me as well as a stress outlet. My favorites end up in the scrapbook and the rest are on an external hard drive that I back up monthly. I was very diligent about taking pics when my little man was less than a yeas but now at 21 months life is so busy that it is hard to remember to grab the camera and record each little memory.
ReplyDeleteI need to get one of those. I also print out photos. Sometimes I do photo books, but they are expensive. I don't like not having hard copies, and I love looking through real photos as opposed to a camera screen or a computer screen. And for the record my iphone messed up this past weekend when I was syncing it and I lost all of my pictures on there. Thankfully, I use my real camera for most pictures.
ReplyDeleteThat is absolutely genius. I love having real pictures too.
ReplyDeleteI bought several of these for Hubby so that he could get the photos from his Mom (she has passed) out of big ol' blue storage boxes and actually able to be seen. I think its the perfect storage container!
ReplyDeleteHave you tried digital scrapbooking? Its perfect for making some of your favorite photos extra special.
I'm a professional photographer, so I take a ton of pictures. I am also very obsessive about backing them up. I have two external hard drives and I also always keep a copy on CD. I'm going to start keeping another external hard drive at my brother in laws incase of fire.
ReplyDeleteI print my favorites though and make a 12x12 Shutterfly album each year. I design them in Photoshop and they are so neat. When we have children, I plan on making them each one album. I already love looking back on past years.
I back up all of my pictures on a hard drive, and keep them in a fire-proof safe, but I am the same way, I want paper copies for my kids to look through when they have kids. Who knows what technology will be like, and they probably won't be able to get them off of the hard drives by then! Unfortunately, I am a few years (!!) behind in printing them out, I need to just start uploading a folder every month and getting them printed already!
ReplyDeleteThose containers are great, I am going to have to get some of those!
Thank you for posting this! I am going to go get some of these boxes. I am like you and afraid of a computer crash. All my pics are printed and in albums but they are taking over. I love looking back at the hard copies.
ReplyDeleteI'm rather paranoid about technology, too, so between my husband and me, we have all of our pictures saved in several different places--external hard drive, zip drives, and I always get a CD copy of all my pictures. But, I also love to have them printed off! I used to use Cropper Hopper's storage system which is very similar to the one you're showing from Hobby Lobby, but I can't really find them anymore. It's just about time to get another one, so I'm so glad I saw your post! Hobby Lobby is AWESOME!
ReplyDeleteYou are SO organized! I'm impressed.
ReplyDeleteOh this is awesome - I need one of these! I never know where to put my pictures until they await to be scrapbooked and I hardly have time to do that anymore. THis is awesome - thanks for sharing your awesome find!
ReplyDeleteWow, I need this!!! My oldest son is 5 and I only have pictures from his first few months printed! I have had another kid since and one more on the way. I need to start printing old pictures! One of my favorite memories from childhood and on into adulthood has been goin through pictures at family gatherings. I want my kids to be able to do the same. Right now, our photos are partially on external hardrive, on our iphoto app, on FB, on the computer hardrive... all over the place! I hate having them unorganized and it's time to do something about it! Thanks for the motivation.
ReplyDeleteThose look great! I've been searching for my next big album to start. I didn't like the last one, but it held so many photos, and I needed something 'right then!'. I store them on my computer using Picasa, print them out and put them in an album (I've been labeling them too!! Crazy!), and I just bought an external hard drive, so someday they'll be saved on that too. :)
ReplyDeletewhitney, that is such a great idea! i have that same fear about technology, i just haven't done anything about it. i think i'm stealing this idea from you!
ReplyDeleteunbelievable! i'm SO getting started on this! thanks fo sharing!!
ReplyDeleteoooooo....I want to be that organized!!!
ReplyDeleteI usually just keep them on my hard drive and maybe post online occasionally. I dated a man who loooveed to order the prints and I have to admit, that was sort of nice to have physical pictures to put up, send to family, etc. I'm just not on top of my game enough to accomplish that independently. That storage unit is awesome, though!
ReplyDeleteFunny! I was just thinking yesterday that I never print off photos anymore. I was going through all of MY favorite pictures from when I was younger and the paper things are kind of damaged. I'm afraid the pictures will get messed up. This looks like it will solve all the problems!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea! I feel the same way...I am so afraid my computer is going to crash and then what?! I will have to look into getting one of these..
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ReplyDeleteoh so thankful you shared this! I was just looking at wally world for these today. I remember seeing them at The Container Store but they're probably cheaper at HL. yay!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea! I'm bookmarking this post as a reminder to go pick up one from Hobby Lobby. (btw, I live in OK too and LOVE hobby lobby-I was shocked when I realized so many people don't have one in their state! I don't know what I would do...)
ReplyDeleteMy pictures are all on my computer, which is backed up with an external hardrive. I also print hard copies of every picture that I want to keep (sometimes I'll take a picture of something just for the blog, like new shoes that I don't print off to keep) and then file them in a photo box, but I love your idea better!
I went to Hobby Lobby today JUST to pick up one of these for myself, and they didn't have anything like this. :( Can I ask how much you paid? I'm trying to figure out other options, like, you know... bribing you to take my money and go buy one for me. ;)
ReplyDeleteOooh, that is a cool storage device! I am a scrapbooker so I have albums for each of my kids with the "highlight" pictures of their lives in them. Then I also order prints of the best of our photos and put them in regular photo albums. Love to snuggle up with them every now and then and you just can't do that with the computer!
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