Photos and home videos are not only fun to look through, but they help us keep a record of our families and our personal legacies. This makes them very sentimental and one of the hardest categories to declutter. Some people take the time to meticulously caption and add them to albums, but even this can lead to many filled shelves or boxes in storage. If you have space, this is an okay solution but imagine if there was a flood or house fire. All those memories would be destroyed. More often, photo collections are in boxes or drawers, and this not only makes them hard to access, view, and enjoy, but it does very little to keep them safe from aging and deterioration over time. The same goes for home videos, whether on cassettes or VHS tapes.
Since the conversion process can be time consuming (if you choose to do it yourself) or expensive (if you elect to use a service), it is best to sort through your items ahead of time to determine what is worth keeping. Here are a few things to consider when sorting and organizing photos and videos:
1. Do you have (near) duplicates of the same photo? Prior to digital photography, taking and printing more than one photo of the same thing to make sure everyone was looking/smiling was not unusual, but when printed, you don’t need to keep all versions. Choose the best and trash the rest.
2. Is the photo good? Blurry photos, photos with the lens cap on, or otherwise “mistakes” are also not worth preserving.
3. Do you know the people in the photo? Sometimes it can take a little research to determine this, but if there is no caption or if the person has no importance to your family or your story, you probably don’t need to keep the photo.
4. Are there people in the photo? Photos of famous buildings and scenery can be a nice addition to your album, but your honeymoon photo of the Colosseum is likely nothing special when you can google it and see 100s of similar (and likely clearer/better) professional versions of the same thing. If the photo is more of an art piece than a family record, maybe it could framed or otherwise displayed to show it off.
5. When it comes to home movies, double check that the home movie you are expecting is actually what is on the tape. As I was converting home movies for my family a few years ago, I unfortunately found that my husband’s 1st birthday was taped over by an early 2000s episode of Friends! As many remember, using blank tapes used to be the way to watch TV you wouldn’t be home to see, but that unfortunately sometimes meant the loss of treasured family moments.
6. Is it a memory worth remembering? Sometimes looking back on bad memories, can cause more pain than good, so here is your permission to trash the pictures of that terrible ex-boyfriend!
How do you convert these items on your own?
For photos, it can be as easy as scanning them and storing them on a computer, flash drive, or cloud storage space. There are even phone applications that allow you to do this with your phone’s camera. Once digital, you can even edit and enhance your photos. I recommend scanning them after they are sorted and be sure to label them with as much detail as possible. This will allow easy access to view the photos for yourself and future generations.
For VHS tapes, I use Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus. In order to use the software, you must have a VCR to connect to your computer (I bought one on Facebook Marketplace), but once you have the necessary equipment, it makes conversion as easy as playing the tapes and pressing record. Once digitized, the videos can be edited and shared by flash drive, cloud services, or even uploaded to a private YouTube channel (for free) so that they can be shared with family and friends.
Are there any other areas that need a refresh in your house?
I would love to help you get your house organized!
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