February 26, 2014

Clutter Buster: Digitizing Old Prints

     I got my first digital camera in April of 2004. My little brother was born in December of 2000. That's almost 4 years of disposable camera pictures that I took of my baby brother. I was a budding photographer and it shows in the piles of photos we have from before my brother was born, let alone all the pictures I took of him when he was a baby. Add in the pictures of me and my son as kids, the old family photos, drawings my son has done, and projects I've worked on - you get a lot of paper clutter. I have wanted to digitize all my old photos for a long time now and didn't have the patience to do so on a flatbed scanner. But then I found this for around $70: SVP 2-in-1 Combo Auto-Feeding Handheld Scanner PS4500 1200DPI Color & Mono with Docking. I have gotten over 1300 photos/documents scanned in less than three full days.

A close-up of just one of the many boxes of prints that needed to be scanned.

     What this means for me is being able to give away most of our old prints to family who will actually display or do something with them instead of let them sit in a box in the garage. It also means just trashing some old prints, yes - I did say trashing. Because I now have digital copies and will be making digital albums to print with all of the photos in them. This is three boxes or more of old paper clutter in my eyes and it's going to feel so nice to get it out of my home and into beautiful books for display. Another benefit means that I can now share old family photos with family members who will truly appreciate them over the internet.

One of my many albums with prints waiting to be scanned.

In the comments: do you have boxes/albums full of prints laying around not being looked at? If you had to guess how many photos do you think you have in print form only?

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