Happy Spring Break Minimalists!
I usually start my #40Bagsin40Days post and purge this time of year - I am a bit behind! I have been diligently working on my pledge to decrapify the attic of all its far-reaching corners of stuff I have successfully ignored for years.
I know - shocking to hear my confession of hoarding, but I must speak truth to crap. After my Dad died in 2014, I was charged with doing a lot of the “keep or toss” decision making, as my sister’s metropolitan Vancouver abode did not permit frivolous storage. So in my grief, I hauled the boxes of his life to the ranch, posted up in the attic, and kept going with life and recovery.
I decided, after countless views of the Home Edit on Netflix, that it was time to sort and organize all that resides in the rafters. We had done a lot of involuntary purging after the Great Flood of 2021 and its subsequent renovations, and now I must face the attic.
My Dad had a zillion slides, shown with projectors that were cutting edge for the mid to late 70’s with a cool fade in/out feature. They were meticulously labeled and numbered, often with the person(s) in the photo, date and location (proof this shit is genetic - thanks Dad). But WTH do *I* do with all that? I am not going to set up a slide show for the neighbors while they sit on my chesterfield in the sunken living room noshing on fondue and listening to the Moody Blues and Steely Dan?
Digitize.
It sounds so easy, yet so cumbersome and time consuming. I have boxes of slides. PLUS, I have 4 binders full of my own *carefully labeled and dated* negative sleeves from my own cool SLR camera before digital cameras came into our lives. So here’s the plan.
Caution to reader: there will be an expense, and I am not getting kickbacks for this advertisement.
My digitizing plan will be assisted by THIS :
The Kodak Slide & Scan for negatives and slides. The goal? To get all the images on an SD card, which I can then store in the cloud, share, or print if I am feeling really crazy. It won’t happen in a weekend (should have planned my spring break better) and definitely not this summer. But, I don’t need a laptop for it, just the handy scanner, so I will scan and date a little at a time.
What will I do with the slides/negatives when I am done? They will probably find themselves in the recycle bin. The SD card is so tiny, and the cloud is (I hope) forever.
I’ll update as I am successful in transforming the huge volume of physical images into digital ones. I hope this triggers a desire to digitize your family memories - it’s definitely a labor of love! I am setting up a little table in the corner with the scanner and boxes so that I can go pop a few in when I have a half hour to kill. It will get done eventually!
I am sure this counts as at LEAST 1 bag per day (only about 28 days left of 40 bags in 40 days so….). Best of luck in your transformation!
