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Do you want to simplify your life but have boxes upon boxes of old photos, photo albums, and even some 35mm negatives gathering dust in your attic or garage? What about those piles of old documents in your office and the recipe clippings in your kitchen? Isn’t it time you did something about them? If your answer is a resounding Yes, followed by a quieter but, how do I go about it? Don’t worry. We’ll guide you every step of the way. We don’t promise it’ll be easy. But we promise that you’ll feel liberated once you’ve digitised your old photos and documents (and your home will be way tidier).
First up: Why bother
Before jumping into the how-to, let’s briefly discuss the why.
Imagine yourself coming home one day, and your home is no more: destroyed by fire, a flood or an earthquake. How would you feel about your old photos and documents?
- Would you be devastated to have lost those precious mementoes? Your why is right there. Make sure you preserve them.
- Would you be relieved because you don’t need them anyway? Don’t (bother). Just chuck them all out. You will save yourself a lot of work.
If your home burnt down would you be relieved or devastated to have lost old photos? | Image courtesy of Canva
For most people, though, it’s not that simple. It’s not one or the other but a bit of both. Hence, our first step is below, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Whether the why is to preserve family history – for yourself and your (grand)kids – or to have more space in your home and less to dust off… if you don’t do it (now), you only postpone the inevitable. When you need to move to a retirement home or (one day) pass away, those who come after you need to sort out what you couldn’t be bothered to do. Do you want to leave that legacy?
If you want to be genuinely location-independent, digitising your life is a MUST!
Also important: Manage your expectations
The (initial) digitisation process can seem insurmountable, especially if you’ve got a lot of documents, photos and/or negatives to take care of.
But don’t fret: You can do it; the rewards far outweigh the pain.
When we started, we had two bookshelves full of folders and boxes with photos, negatives and documents (mostly belonging to Sandra). Within a year, we reduced this to a thin folder of valuable originals in a safety deposit box. We digitised on rainy weekends and many evenings after work. Once you get started, you’ll develop a routine that makes you faster as you go along.
Digitising documents and photos takes time, but it's worth the effort | Image courtesy of Canva
Does it sound reasonable? Okay, let’s get started.
Step 1: Prioritise
Before you start, assess what you have and prioritise—box by box, folder by folder. Post-it notes or stickers with numbers work well: 1 = most important, 5 = no longer needed.
- Most important are, for example, birth/marriage/graduation certificates and those precious photos you’d be most upset about losing.
- Documents beyond the time required to keep for tax purposes, receipts you can’t read, old-school workbooks, etc., would no longer be needed.
A word of advice: Don’t go through your boxes and look at EVERY. SINGLE. PHOTO. You’ll get sidetracked, reminiscing about times gone by, and won’t get anything done. You’ll have plenty of time to look at those old photos when you scan them. If you haven’t labelled your boxes (or folders), quickly look at what’s in them (and write it on the outside). Then, prioritise and move on to the following box/folder.
Finally, if you have the space, we recommend prioritising your boxes and folders to work through some neat piles (seeing results as the piles get smaller or disappear).
Prioritize your photos and documents before you start digitising | Image courtesy of Tim Gouw on Unsplash
Step 2: Determine your storage solution
While many people still seem to use (external) hard drives, we recommend storing your scans in the cloud: Microsoft OneDrive is our favourite. Other consumer-based options are iCloud, Google Drive, and Dropbox.
The advantage? You can access your photos and documents from anywhere (which is excellent if you need a copy of your passport in case you’ve been robbed while travelling) and share them with anyone. The likelihood that a data centre burns down or is destroyed by floods (without any backups) is also minuscule compared to an external hard drive corrupting.
The other advantage of storing your data in the cloud is that you can easily add storage as needed.
Storing your digitised photos and documents in the cloud has many advantages | Image courtesy of Rawpixel on Pixabay
Step 3: Digitise
Depending on how many photos and/or documents you have to take care of and whether you have a deadline looming/how much time you’ve got, you have two options:
- Engage someone else to digitise for you, or
- Do it yourself.
Get someone else to digitise them for you
This might be your only option if you are (indeed) time-poor. It may also be a viable option if you can’t or don’t want to afford the equipment required to digitise. Here are some professional providers you may want to check out:
- Worldwide: Association of Personal Photo Organisers
- USA: Memories Renewed, PhotoBridge and Southtree
- New Zealand: Let’s scan, Scan4U
- Australia: Memories 2 Digital, Photo Digital Services, Scan Ur Pics.
However, this option can be costly and easily cost you more than buying (and subsequently selling) the equipment. Professional digitisation services usually charge per photo/document. Let’s assume you have 10,000 photos/documents. For USD0.50 per item, getting someone else to digitise them would cost you a whopping USD5,000.
Digitise yourself
If you do it yourself and don’t have a good scanner, we recommend buying one. When Paul started to digitise his photos and documents, he used a Canon Pixma Scanner. However, since Sandra had a whole box of 35mm negatives, we needed to look for another option: The Canon couldn’t handle negatives, and getting those negatives scanned professionally would have cost a fortune.
We purchased an Epson Perfection Photo Scanner in Australia after weighing the price, functionality, and scan speed. We sold the scanner after digitising all our old photos, negatives, and documents for the same price in New Zealand. So, in the end, all it cost us was our time.
If you digitise yourself, slowly work through all boxes and folders, starting with the ones labelled one and then moving to 2, 3, and 4. Digitising your old photos, negatives, and/or documents is excellent for rainy afternoons (and grizzly, cold winter weekends).
Pick a scanning solution based on your needs | Image courtesy of Jason Leung on Unsplash
Step 4: Organise
Whether someone else digitises for you or you do it yourself, you must organise your (digitised) photos, negatives and documents.
Create a filing system
First, create a digital folder system that makes it easy to find your scanned documents and/or photos. Then determine a naming template that works for you, for example, YYYYMMDD_Description. If you have several photos capturing the same thing, you could add a run number at the end:
- YYYYMMDD_Description_001,
- YYYYMMDD_Description_002, etc.
Embed metadata in image files
Windows Photo Gallery allows you to tag people, geotag locations, and add the date a photo was taken without changing the file name of the scanned photo. The metadata you enter is embedded in the image file.
Why could this be useful?
- You can keep all your photos in one folder and use a filing system for your documents.
- Embedded metadata allows you to filter by location or person and sort by date – enabling you to quickly access photos of your children from birth to today (great for that slide show at your son’s 21st or your daughter’s wedding).
To make your life easier, there is also a Bulk Rename Utility. As the name implies, this utility allows you to easily rename files and entire folders based on highly flexible criteria.
If you’d like to organise your newly digitised photos to a new level, check out this comparison of photo organizer software.
Don't forget to organize your scanned photos and documents | IMage courtesy of Samuel Zeller on Unsplash
Step 5: (Safely) Dispose
As you scan your photos, negatives, and/or documents, place the ones you’ve processed (and don’t want to keep) into a box labelled 5 (no longer needed). When the box is full, dispose of its contents safely!
Why is it necessary, and how do you dispose of them safely?
- Why: Imagine you chucked old bank statements, ID documents or utility bills with your name and (still valid) address into your household bin. How easy would it be for someone to steal your identity and open a credit card account in your name? Make sure you protect your data and prevent identity fraud. Likewise, you wouldn’t want your photos to be in the wrong hands.
- How: Void your processed photos, negatives and/or documents by burning them (fully) or shredding them. We shredded all our processed items using a Home Office Shredder – including CDs with medical images, laminated/plastic documents such as old passport ID pages, driver’s licenses and expired credit cards.
Make sure you dispose of your digitized items safely | Image courtesy of Hans Braxmeier on Pixabay
Step 6: (Safely) Retain
There may be some important documents (for example, birth and citizenship certificates, marriage and divorce certificates, graduation certificates, etc) you may want to retain as originals (after you digitised them).
To safely store those few documents (and any valuables we wanted to keep), we decided to hire a safety deposit box in a bank vault, which costs us NZD200 a year. You may have a safe at home and could store them there. If neither is an option for you, even storing them in a single folder, protected from the elements in plastic sleeves might be a better solution than you have now. It’s also easier to grab in an emergency than a carload of shoe boxes. And if worse comes to worst, you have a copy in the cloud and can apply for a reissue.
It may be worth storing some important original documents (after digitizing them) | Image courtesy of Samuel Zeller on Unsplash
Finally: How to remain paperless
With digital photography now commonplace, most people won’t have any further physical photos to take care of once they’ve digitised their old ones. If they do pop up (for example, when your parents pass away and you want to preserve some old family photos for future generations), follow the same steps above.
Our recommendation for handling documents in the future:
- Reduce paper: Opt to receive any communication from banks, utility providers and the like via email (or access statements and invoices as needed online). Save important communication in your filing system in the cloud. Reducing paper is also better for the environment.
- Avoid new piles: If you have something that needs to be scanned, do it immediately. These days, you don’t need to wait until you are at home to scan an invoice/receipt or other documents. We use the Microsoft OneDrive app, which lets you scan with your smartphone and upload your scans directly to the cloud. However, ensure you still dispose of those processed items safely.
Make sure no new paper piles are building up | Image courtesy of Ag Ku on Pixabay
Are you interested in further reading? Scan Your Entire Life is a dedicated blog that can answer questions you didn’t even know you had.
Have you started preserving your memories?
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