There are many benefits of moving into an assisted living space. Not only can you enjoy extra help with your daily tasks, but there is less home upkeep to deal with. You don’t have to worry about maintaining an entire house and the cleaning that comes with it.
However, moving into a smaller space often means decluttering and throwing away furniture and other items you no longer need. But what about your memories? Your photos and camcorder videos are priceless, but will you have the space to store them in your new home?
You can take all of your photos with you and only need a thumb drive for storage. Learn about the process of digitizing your photos and videos to preserve these memories for years to come.
Use Less Physical Storage by Digitizing Your Photos
One of the main benefits of digitizing your photos is that you can keep all of your memories on hand without having to find physical storage space for them. If you owned a film camera and camcorder throughout your life, you could have several boxes of prints, tapes, and carefully-curated albums. While these albums tell stories about your life, they are also bulky and hard to look through.
By digitizing your photos, you can reduce the amount of storage space you need in your future living space. A 16 GB thumb drive can hold more than 10,000 photos – that’s hundreds of rolls of film. These flash drives can get plugged into any computer or laptop to view on your own time. If you want to pull up photos from a child’s birth in the late 80s, you don’t have to spend the morning sorting through endless albums.
Give Your Albums and Tapes to Relatives
If you decide that digitizing your photos is the best choice ahead of moving to an assisted living facility, know that you don’t have to give up your original prints. After we scan your photos, our team members return each original print and video back to you. This means you will have two copies of your memories: the original prints and the digital scans.
Once we ship back your albums and tapes, you can decide what to do with the prints. Some people give the memories to a relative or child to hold on to. If your son or daughter has a house with storage space, they might be able to keep the prints. Other people choose to throw away the bulky original tapes and albums now that they have digital scans.
This last option is increasingly popular with people who need videos scanned. Most people don’t have VHS players or camcorder hookup abilities anymore, which means there is no way to watch the memories. Digitizing your photos and videos allows you to access your memories while preserving them.
Protect Your Memories With Digital Storage
Another benefit of digitizing your photos before you move into assisted living is that you can rest easy knowing they will be protected. Some adults place items in storage before moving into their new living spaces. While many storage units are safe and come with security, they are not ideal locations for photo prints and videotapes.
Videotapes break down naturally over time. They become brittle after more than a decade, which means you can start to lose your recorded memories. Photos can also wear out if they aren’t carefully stored. If you place your videos and photos in storage, the heat and humidity could cause them to deteriorate. Your photos could fade or get stuck together.
By digitizing your photos, you can relax knowing that you will always have access to those memories. You don’t have to worry about heat, flooding, fires, or any natural disasters destroying your old media.
Let Relatives Access Your Memories
Photos are meant to be looked at. Videos are made to be watched. Are your memories really helping you or your family if they are stuck in boxes and scattered across various closets? By digitizing your photos, you can make your memories sharable. You can post videos online that you took decades ago. You can tell stories about your relatives and enhance them with photos you find in your records.
When you make your memories sharable, you are keeping them alive. You might be surprised by how interested your grandkids are in your childhood or early adult life. You have the power to keep the memories of your own grandparents strong by sharing photos that you digitize.
By keeping analog photo prints, you are the only one who can access those memories – key parts of your legacy and family history. Digitize your photos to share them with everyone who cares about you.
Complete the Entire Project at Once
Any move is an exhausting move. You likely have countless cabinets and closets to search through to determine what gets donated and what you will take to the assisted living facility. If you are considering digitizing your photos, don’t add stress to your life by breaking this project up. Too often, people send us a box of photos and strips of film but then need to work with our team again to digitize slides, videotapes, and scrapbooks.
We accept all forms of media. We can digitize almost any memories that you have. As you work to declutter your home and downsize, put all of your photo prints and memories in one place. This way you can digitize them all at once for a single, simple project.
Start Your Order With Memory Fortress Today
Don’t leave your photos and videos behind if you are planning to move into assisted living. There is always space for your favorite albums and home videos. Gather these memories and prepare to ship them to Memory Fortress. We will scan them, return the prints, and deliver your digital memories in any format you want. The entire process is easy and requires no time or effort on your end. We’ll even pay to return your memories to you.
Start your order today and protect decades of memories for only $29 down.
We digitize everything right here at our facility in metro Atlanta, processed by US citizens.