What to do about pictures

After moving into my motorhome and having more time available, I tackled the problem of the many boxes of pictures I had accumulated over my lifetime. I brought them in from my storage area a box at a time and scanned them into my computer. This is a rather slow and tedious process but was well worth it. I had a digital camera at that point so all future pictures would be on my computer as well.

I now have all my pictures on the computer sorted by subject. You could also categorize them by date but since I did not know the date many of them were taken, that was not an option for me. I rather like being able to see all pictures of a certain person as they were growing up all in one place. To have unique names for all pictures in a folder, I just put the name of the subject and a number. I still have all my pictures available to look at but now they take up no physical room, which supports my minimalist lifestyle.

This also provides you with a backup of the pictures. In case of a fire, flood, tornado or some catastrophic event, your single physical picture would not fare so well. I made copies on CD or DVD and gave one set to my son who lived in a different city, kept one set in my motorhome and took another set in to work. So I had four electronic copies of my pictures as well as the physical copy still in storage. Overkill, I know, but making copies is very easy and my son wanted a copy of them anyway and I never have to worry about losing the precious pictures of my son as a baby. That peace of mind was worth the extra work.

I also now have my pictures available as a screen saver on my computer and since I have copied the pictures to my iPod, I can show those precious pictures of my son as a baby to everyone I meet. LOL Not really, but I can if I want.

So what have you done with your pictures?

Live long and simply.