Do you have a ton of family memories that are just lying around? Is it making you feel kind of bad? There’s a reason why it makes you feel bad, preserving memories are important for the past, present, and future generations. Here are 8 ways to preserve family memories.
8 Ways to Preserve Your Family Memories
It can be overwhelming to start a preservation project. See what works for you.
1. Old Home Movies
These are the most urgent memories to preserve. They are deteriorating everyday. You start to lose the color in them. Services like LegacyBox make it easy to save them.
An added bonus of digitizing these old movies is that they can be turned into framable stills, which can then be framed pictures.
2. Don’t Take Apart Old Photo Albums
If you take apart an album, you’ve lost the context of the photos. Instead, you take a piece of unbleached muslin and one that has not been treated with fabric softeners. Wrap the album up to keep all the loose pieces together and store it in an acid free box.
If you have loose photos, you can store them in individual polypropylene sleeves, including a piece of acid free paper. This is so you can put all the info about the moment in time of the picture.
3. Back Up Images On Cloud Services
Photos and documents, like hospital records or old letters, can be shared through the internet. You can use services like Dropbox or Google Drive.
You don’t need a fancy scanner to upload your old photos. Google PhotoScan is a free app that works on your smartphone.
If there are too many for just you alone, try setting up a family reunion where everyone helps you. This gives people the chance share stories.
4. Younger Relatives Can Interview Older Ones
They can have amazing stories that will be lost if they aren’t recorded. Younger relatives will have never heard these stories and may have questions that no one else would think of asking.
5. Store Hard Copies Carefully
Make sure photos and documents are off the floor and out of basements or attics. They should also be away from vents and rooms that share an outside wall where temperature or moisture fluctuations can cause damage.
6. Tie In Contemporary Photos on Social Media to Your Family Archives
It’s so easy to drag and drop hundreds of digital photos to the cloud, and it leaves a trail for family to discover one day. You can have a word doc in each file that explains the situations around the photos.
7. Tell Your Family Heirloom’s Stories
People may not know how important items are and throw them away. People in the future should know why heirlooms are so important. Write down their history.
You can create an album with photos and notes about each of the heirlooms.
8. Contact Your Local Historical Society
If none of these options are good for you, try contacting your local historical society to see if they want your family’s items.
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