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There’s a holiday for everything these days and the fourth Sunday in March kicks off National Cleaning Week. This usually aligns with the first day of Spring, which is known as a time for rebirth and fresh starts. If you are ready to Spring Clean your home and need an excuse to turn your chores into a fun event, look no further than National Cleaning Week.
Spring Cleaning is often associated with tasks like putting away your winter clothes, donating items you no longer need, and preparing your garage and patio for warmer weather. However, there is one important project that you shouldn’t overlook this year – digitizing your old media, whether it’s yourself or through a photo and slide scanning service. Don’t forget to organize, digitize, and clear out the boxes of old prints and tapes you have at home. Here’s how to do it (and why you should).
See How Much Space Your Analog Media Requires
The first step when organizing old media during National Cleaning Week is to gather all of your photos, albums, scrapbooks, slides, film rolls, videotapes, cassettes, and other memories. Establish a hub in your house to place these memories while you organize them and prepare for the digitization process.
You might be shocked by how much space you can free up in your home by removing these old memories. Some people have entire closets full of print photos and VHS tapes full of family recordings. If you diligently kept up with photo books when film cameras were popular, you could have several bulky albums that only have 50 or so photos added to each one.
Spring cleaning is all about reclaiming your living area and removing clutter. Photo digitization is a great way to use this. To get an idea of where to start, use our guide for hidden places where you might have stored old media and forgotten about it in your home.
Organize Your Photos and Videos
Spring cleaning doesn’t just mean scrubbing the floors and wiping down dusty surfaces. It also means getting organized. The next step for your National Cleaning Week project is to organize your photos so they can be easily accessed whenever you want to look at them.
Right now, could you quickly find your college graduation photos? What about your eldest child’s baby pictures? If you are like most homeowners, it would take a long process of sorting and digging through old albums until you found the right time period where those pictures are located. There has to be a better way.
At Memory Fortress, we can scan photos and videos into groups, which makes them easier to find. Consider organizing your memories by year so you can easily sort through the decades of images you have. You can also sort your photos and videos by event, so your wedding album and the video of your vows stay together in the same folder.
Use our photo organization guide to get a few ideas on how you can sort your memories.
Ship Your Old Media to Memory Fortress
The third step for organizing your old media for National Cleaning Week is to get everything out of the house! You don’t need to take on a major photo-scanning project just as the weather starts to improve. Scanning photos with an app or investing in a scanner is time-consuming and frustrating for most people with hundreds of photos to scan.
Instead, tell our team at Memory Fortress to expect your shipment of media. We only require a $29 deposit and an estimate of how many photos we will receive. Our team will receive your memories, scan them within a week, and send you the digital copies. We will also return your original media if you want to hold onto it.
By using our service, you can protect your memories for decades to come. You won’t have to worry about sunlight or humidity damaging your prints or video film wearing out over time. Plus you can easily send old memories to friends and relatives to brighten up their days throughout the year.
Enjoy Your Newly Decluttered Space
It’s your choice whether you hold on to your old media once it is digitized. You can return it to your closets and drawers to look through whenever you want to walk down memory lane. Some people continue to store the original memories (just not in a storage unit) and use the digital copies as backup images.
However, other people use this digitization project during National Cleaning Week as a way to declutter their homes. They might save their baby books and wedding albums but throw out the hundreds of loose photo prints taken throughout the years. This decluttering can prepare homeowners to downsize or give them a sense of calm in their current homes.
Organization experts believe decluttering feels so good because it removes stressors from your subconscious. You don’t have to think about maintaining or repairing various items in your home because they are no longer there. With analog media, you don’t have to stress about VHS tapes you can’t watch anymore or photos that are warped because all of your memories will be digitized successfully. What starts as a fun project for National Cleaning Week can actually bring long-term happiness to your household.
Use National Cleaning Week to Complete Indoor Projects
The snow has finally melted away and the trees are starting to bloom. However, before your family can play outside, spend some time preparing your home for the warmer months. Donate items you no longer need while taking steps to declutter your household.
If you are ready to digitize your media and preserve it for generations, reach out to the experts at Memory Fortress. We are happy to receive your shipment of images at our Atlanta-based office. If you live nearby, you can even drop off your memories in person and see how our team operates. (Just let us know beforehand so there is someone to greet you.)
Start your Memory Fortress order today and take the first steps to digitize your memories. This is a great Spring project that can benefit your family for decades.
We digitize everything right here at our facility in metro Atlanta, processed by US citizens.