For the last two days I’ve been organizing my family videos. The videos are stored in a cabinet in my library. It’s a catch all for the videos and holiday items. I cleared everything out and piled the DVD’s on the floor by year.

There are old family videos from when I was a child, my children’s lives, and Nick’s Fight to be Healed events. This part of decluttering and organizing is overwhelming for me. I think it would be for anyone if you haven’t kept up on it. A lifetime of memories on round plastic, just a click away.

In addition to what’s on these videos, these DVD’s remind me of the kindness and selflessness of my tribe. The videos were originally stored on 8mm tapes. When Nick passed, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to access them with the changing technology. Mark, our close family friend, took years of 8mm tapes, transferred them to DVDs and labeled every single one of them. It’s priceless to be able to look back at these videos—see the wonderful times, watch my children grow, hear their voices and laughter. His kindness will have a lasting impact.

They are now in chronological order but just like with my journals, I want to keep an inventory. I have a folder in Google drive called ‘Lists of journals/scrapbooks/photos/videos.’ In that folder, I have two files: ‘All journals/scrapbooks/photos—listed by date’ and ‘All videos-listed by date/format.’

I’ve added all the separate volumes, DVD’s, all pieces of our family history so they can be crossed referenced. I also use this list as a guide for writing my memoir. I know which journals and now videos I have gone through to see what will go in this current memoir or a future one. Plus, it will be a guide for Stephen to easily find his family stories.

My other concern, besides easily finding moments in our lives, is being able to view them in the future. What happens when DVDs no longer work? I’m looking into possibly having them on USB drives, an external drive, or a cloud-based service. I worry about subscriptions, because what happens if that company goes out of business? These are the worries that scurry around my mind.

Matt Paxton offers fabulous resources in his book. I’ll look into these and let you know what I find. I still have some 8mm tapes I need to transfer and reel tapes that my mom wants to be able to view. So this is a multi-step process. Right now the most important step is seeing what I have.

Check out these resources from Matt Paxton’s book:

Photo Organization and Digitization:

Legacybox (www.legacybox.com)

Memories by Matt Paxton (www.memoriesbymattpaxton.com)

Photomyne (www.photomyne.com)

The Photo Managers (www.thephotomanagers.com)

Photo Storage

Forever (www.forever.com)

Photomyne (www.photomyne.com)

SmugMug (www.smugmug.com)

With the digital world, it’s easy to lose track of our memories. No matter where you are, start now to organize and save them.

I’d love to know how you store your photos and videos.