Host (Mollie):
Well, we are going to be going truly live with our program in about five minutes. But Judy, I thought it would be great to bring us on beforehand so people can have a little bit more time to join our podcast today.
Judy: I think that's a great idea.
Mollie: Thank you so much for joining. We were just talking about procrastinating and prioritizing. I find that I am really challenged by that.Maybe I'll get a few tidbits from you today on that later in the program.
Judy: I'm happy to help.
Mollie: I think actually people have troubles prioritizing photos in general, so that's not my my issue. But quite often I hear people mention that, you know, photos is on their to do list, but it's all the other household things that become, more important to complete.
Or there's a family life issue that becomes the priority. And the pictures are are kind of set to the side. And I don't know if that's been your experience, but
Judy: always, always people want to organize the things they see all the time. They want to organize that closet that they open every day, or the top of their counters, or the top of their desk, or the things that you know, you wouldn't think would be all of that distressing.
But they really are because they're seen all the time. And when you want people to start having success, that's usually where you start something that you see. So it motivates you to do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and starts, you know, how do you eat an elephant, right? One bite at a time.
Mollie: So, well, I think that is a pretty interesting analogy. I have heard that before.
Judy: IIt's the most important thing is to start.
Mollie: Yes. And that is part of why I have this podcast going is just I had to restart and figure out how to help people keep it top of mind. And I am just going to mention if you are joining us before our livestream starts officially at ten central, you can say hello in the comments. And we'd love to know where you're from as well. I'm in Wisconsin and
Judy: I'm in Massachusetts, Massachusetts on the East Coast.
Mollie: So what is the weather like out there?
Judy: I'm in Massachusetts, Massachusetts on the East Coast.
Mollie: So what is the weather like out there?
Judy: It's very hot and very humid today. We're staying indoors.
Mollie: It's a good day for a podcast.
Judy: Exactly, exactly. Perfect day.
Mollie: I know I, I feel like it's been more humid lately in Wisconsin.Even our June was pretty intense
Judy: Yeah, this is our 14th or 15th day with temperatures over 90 and the humidity and not in a row, but since the beginning of summer.
Mollie: Well one day at a time it will get better.
We'll be complaining because it's winter approaches
Mollie: I know, so I feel like winter out in Massachusetts can be a doozy.With the weather from the, the ocean and snow storm.
Judy: We haven't had so many dramatic winters of late, but I do remember some where, you know, we were at to the top of the garage doors with snow piled at the end of the driveway and had to have someone come and get a backhoe to move the snow so we could plow some more.
Mollie: Crazy. Well, all right, if you're joining here with us live, you can say hello in the comments, tell us where you're from. And of course, I'll try to answer your questions. If anyone has some to post today. And if you're catching this on the recording, we also watch for questions. There as well. So I think it is time.
It's 10:00 central time and I'm going to, take you off camera for a few minutes. And then I'll bring you back on. I'm really excited that you're joining us here today.
Mollie: Welcome to live with Mollie. It is Friday, July 25th, and we are coming today because we had some technical difficulties on Tuesday. Next week we will be back at our regular time, which is 10 a.m. central, and I haven't quite decided what the topics are going to be yet, but I know it'll be interesting and hopefully inspiring for you to start saving your memories.
Now a few housekeeping items. We are live on YouTube and a couple other channels here. If you have questions today, you can throw them in the comments and we will try to answer them if we can. And if you're catching this on the replay, I also watch for questions that appear in the different places we have this posted.
If you're watching on Spotify, I. I highly encourage you to look for the link to view it on YouTube, because we often have visuals that will help you understand what we're talking about on the show. Today, I'm really excited to have Judy Girton here with me, and she'll be coming on in a moment. I was able to talk with Judy a little bit a few weeks ago, and it really reminded me of, former career of mine.
Mollie: And actually, I don't know if career or former adequately describes, you know, how I feel about how my life started out in the professional world. I was a social worker, and my first job was in a long term care facility in, Milwaukee, and it was working with people who had advanced Alzheimer's and dementia. And I worked with the families.
And I really felt, you know, a calling to help improve quality of life. You know, no matter where people were in their life journey. But being a social worker wasn't quite the answer. I lasted for about nine months, being a long term care social worker, and after that my journey took me to managing adult centers and community programs, working with older adults, and it was very rewarding managing community programs.
And the goal was, you know, to help people live as long as possible in the community. I remember taking my my infant children to visit some of the people that I worked with, and I spent time getting people involved with, you know, outings into the community so that people could appreciate the value that elders bring. And honestly, this was setting the foundation for helping people in some way and making sure that quality of life is as good as possible.
I noticed, you know, during those years at talking with people about their their social history is what we called it. I learned a lot about them, but when they pulled out their pictures, that's when, you know, I, I really saw what life was like back in their younger days. And I, I found that when the time came for me to leave the long term care field and start Pixologie, I found that it really wasn't that big of a change.
Mollie: I still had a mission in helping people improve their quality of life, and when people look at photos from their past and even the present, it does do wonderful things. Photos improve a person's connections to their past. It improves connections with their children and grandchildren. Now, I know there are memories that can be painful and I don't discount that at all.
But overall, when people look back at the pictures from their past, it seems to be a good thing. I even have seen photos inspire people to do lots of things to lose weight, to travel, to amazing places, to raise money for causes. I could show you a whole handful of pictures of my children at the memory logs for the Alzheimer's Association.
And I really felt, you know, a calling to help improve quality of life. You know, no matter where people were in their life journey. But being a social worker wasn't quite the answer. I lasted for about nine months, being a long term care social worker, and after that my journey took me to managing adult centers and community programs, working with older adults, and it was very rewarding managing community programs.
And the goal was, you know, to help people live as long as possible in the community. I remember taking my my infant children to visit some of the people that I worked with, and I spent time getting people involved with, you know, outings into the community so that people could appreciate the value that elders bring. And honestly, this was setting the foundation for helping people in some way and making sure that quality of life is as good as possible.
I noticed, you know, during those years at talking with people about their social history is what we called it. I learned a lot about them, but when they pulled out their pictures, that's when, you know, I, I really saw what life was like back in their younger days. And I, I found that when the time came for me to leave the long term care field and start Pixologie, I found that it really wasn't that big of a change.
Mollie: I still had a mission in helping people improve their quality of life, and when people look at photos from their past and even the present, it does do wonderful things. Photos improve a person's connections to their past. It improves connections with their children and grandchildren. Now, I know there are memories that can be painful and I don't discount that at all.
But overall, when people look back at the pictures from their past, it seems to be a good thing. I even have seen photos inspire people to do lots of things to lose weight, to travel, to amazing places, to raise money for causes. I could show you a whole handful of pictures of my children at the memory logs for the Alzheimer's Association.
They grew up knowing that we support causes that will help, research and support family caregivers and more. So when we started Pixologie, I realized that I still wanted to help people in a different way. I mean, obviously, we have been organizing photos for people and scanning and digitizing them for it's going on 13 years. In fact, I think tomorrow is our 13 year anniversary from when and my friend and I started Pixologie.
We wanted to help people have hands on help with their pictures, and that meant taking their bins and boxes of photos, film and video, organizing it, and then creating an archive which we now call a photo a state and where everything could be accessed in one place. The system for bringing all the photos and videos and digitizing all of that together takes a lot of time, and our services cost a lot of money.
Mollie: On average, photo organizing I think is around $125 per hour. And imagine how long it can take to organize, you know, a bunch of boxes of photos. For us, we're faster at it, but it still adds up some of our work. You know, it's thousands of dollars. And I knew right from the beginning that we needed to have, a way to share our system for saving photos because everybody should be able to do this themselves.
They mostly just needed a plan. So we have books on Amazon that share our entire system. And then during the pandemic, we began developing, videos on YouTube for people to, follow our system. And they could see the work in action. And that's where I've been focusing more of my time is just consumer education because the photos keep accumulating.
We're not managing those from the past. And we're going to lose important stories, important information about the people who came before us and the stories of our families that make us who we are today. So my my online education is absolutely a part of my social work past where I want to help anybody and everybody who has photos that need to be saved so that they can be enjoyed and shared today and then passed on to future generations and that is how I met Judy Girton.
Mollie: She found one of my videos on YouTube, and I'm going to bring her on, and we're going to hear a little bit about, her story. You know, why she was looking for photo help. And then we're going to learn a little bit about how she helps people. Especially older adults, in planning. All right, Judy, and let me get you, situated here. Okay. So, Judy, tell me again, and our audience, you know how you came across me. What was going on that led you to look for help?
Judy: Well, about a year ago, my brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which is a very aggressive form of cancer. And within a year, he was gone. And during that time that he was declining, I thought, we need a way to remember him when he's gone.
And I certainly know that when people have services and whatnot, after someone's passed that, photos play a big part, and I didn't want to be scrambling at the end trying to come up with something in a couple of days. So I found one of your videos and I started to think about, well, how am I going to gather all these things together?
And I really focused on photos that were him, his family, his experiences, whether with the whole family or just, you know, his wife and children. Because I wanted that those memories are so wonderful. And, you know, I kept thinking, what if today is the last day? What if there are no more days to ask questions or to gather information or what do you what do you do then?
And then I looked at the whole of my life and thought, you know, when my mother died, she had boxes of photo albums and black and white pictures and things that went back to the 1930s. So pulling and she had pulled some of them apart. Some of them were still in the albums. And I was like, you know, I'm I'm the keeper of the goods, right?
I have brothers and family that I'm sure would also enjoy having these, these things. So, you know, as I went about thinking about it, I'm like, well, how do I how do I encompass all of it? How do I make it so that my brothers can have copies, that their children can download copies and we can tell them, who are these people?
Because I've come across so many that I'm sure somebody knew at some point who these people were, but I don't really have a way at my fingertips right now to know what that is. You know, for me, the older generations are all gone. It's my generation. It's me, my brothers. You know, there are no more grandparents. There's no more aunts and uncles to ask all these questions, too.
So although I know people are much more digitally based now, people still print pictures, people still take photos. People's stories still needs to be told. So, you know, I found that I think I told you this before, I think I must have missed the photo organizing gene in my organizer journey as I became a professional organizer, because it is part of the estate.
And as I as I started to think about what I'm doing next, I thought, you know, when my mother died, everything was paper based. Eventually things showed up in the mail. But now things are all digital and so how are we going to access them? How are we going to save them? How are we going to tell that story?
And it's a massive undertaking. So, you know, looking for that structure, looking for how not to just look at the boxes and go, yeah, I need to do that. It's not going to help us if we don't have a plan. But I think, you know, as we talked about before, it's, you know, it's a bite at a time.It's not you don't have to eat the whole buffet today. You can start with the appetizer. What's that? And, you know, move on to the main course and, you know, add in things along the way.
Mollie: So how did you how did you start? Did you aim to go through the boxes to find the photos that were related to your brother?
Judy: I had hired a young, college student to come to my house, and I had the main box of photos from my mother and I had her. This was years ago. I had her scan, all of them, so I had that file. So I started with that. And then I found some of my mother's photo albums that had been in my attic and then my basement after she died.
And I thought, these are photos that I don't have anymore, because at one point we took a, memory card to Costco to print pictures and left the memory card in the machine. So we lost years. And I thought, well, they're gone forever. I've lost, like, this whole segment of my life. And that's when I started thinking, you know, you need a system that has a backup system and a back up to that so that you don't find yourself in this situation again.
But as I uncovered those albums, those pictures, many of them I've already found. So those years now I'm starting to fill them in and it's a matter of, you know, designate a day, designate a time, and just do this many and you'll get there. And I think that's that's how I approach my organizing business. That's how I approach now these photos.
And I think it's just, you know, being being a little giving yourself a little bit of grace that every and everything that you do today is one more thing that you have done. And it's part now it's part of your digital estate. You can, you can save them, you can share them, you can bequeath them. Right. And I think you talk a lot about, you know, who owns or who owns your data.
Who owns your photos. And I that was like you know it's like gobsmacked. Yeah. Who owns your photos. Do you, you put them in the cloud but then you die and that account gets closed. And then what happens to your photos. So for me that was really the wake up call. And I've been working, you know, a handful at a time, a couple inches of photos at a time and trying to make sense of, you know, where do they belong.
And knowing that even if I change my mind later, I still have time to fix that. But they are scanning and they are getting saved in another form.
Mollie: Sure. How how was the slideshow? Because you did a slideshow,
Judy: I did, I was able to do a slideshow for the services and I had talked in my eulogy about the different vignettes in the, in the photo array that I had presented for the, you know, for the time that people were going through the line and waiting for the service.
And, people were like, I remember that. Oh, I oh, you guys did this? Oh, I was oh, we were so little. Oh, do you remember going to Lake Wentworth? Do you remember doing this? Do you remember it? And we had photos of all of it. You know, my brother's love of motorcycles, of trucks, of, you know, all the great things that he built in his life that we have, like photo evidence that he built the shed any where he did these things on his house.And he took down a whole entire house to get materials for his own home. It was it was a fascinating journey. And, you know, like I say, don't want time to run out so that you can't gather these things anymore.
Mollie: Yeah. I that's a strong set of words. You don't want time to run out.And I'm, I'm really fortunate I have my mother and my mother in law still with me.
And we have all talked about pictures and the who's who. And I wish that for everybody if they're able, you know, to have that opportunity to, you know, even even if it is, like you said, just a handful of pictures to talk about. It's not a it's kind of even more fun, you know, to go visit when you have a handful of pictures and you can chat about the pictures instead of trying to think.
Sometimes, well, what am I going to talk about today? And yeah, actually that doesn't apply for my mom or my mother in law, right? I noticed it even, you know, in the long term care setting, sometimes families weren't sure what what they would really talk about. But if you brought a photo book or that old album, boy, some really amazing stories come out of that.
Judy: I remember in my career as an occupational therapist, which was what I did before, becoming a professional organizer, the same kind of thing, you know, being in the memory units and helping families create memory books, gathering photos that, you know, remembered their children and their grandchildren and their neighbors and their flower bed and all of the things that were important to them, and having it so that they could look at it anytime they wanted.
And that, you know, they didn't have computers or that or the ability to go on the computers, but those those real printed photographs meant the world to them. And their families too, because people would come to visit and it would give them a chance to go through the book with them and tell their stories.
Mollie: Now you mentioned that you were an occupational therapist. What took you from occupational therapy to being a professional organizer.
Judy: Well when I at the end of my I've worked in physical disabilities, I worked in home care, I've worked in psychiatric units. But at the end of my career, I was working in home care and at that point, managed care was getting very active and a lot of what we wanted to do, we had to ask for pre authorization to do it.
And I would say, well, I need three visits to do this with this particular patient. And they would say, you can have one. I didn't mean that I could do it in one. And I always went home feeling like I if I could just have done these other things, I would have made them safer. I would have helped their family more.
And one day we were sitting at the office at the agency where I worked and said with a couple of other therapists that, we should be organizing people's closets. So that's what we set out to do. We started a company and we started doing physical organizing of people's homes and offices. And eventually, over time, I found I really liked the technology and the paper and the documentation and really focused more on that.
Mollie: How big of a problem is it?
Judy: Paper. Yeah, paper is huge. Because, you know, even in my own life as an organizer, it's telling my own story, telling my own truth. There are boxes full of paper and I've been also working on that because this, again, is not something I want to leave as my legacy. I think back in the day when everything was paper based, we kept all the paper and then those boxes were just sealed and stored and we forgot about them.
But as I look maybe now towards getting ready to downsize at some point, like I. Or what if something happened to me, like what happened to my brother? I don't want to leave this for my family. I don't want to make them have to make all these decisions or decide, is this something that should be shred or something that needs to be saved?
Or, you know, what do I need in an emergency? Or where are all the important documents? That's what I've been working on. And that's that's why I wrote that book. Beyond the estate plan was to help people think about, well, if today is the last day or time is running out, what do you need? What will your family need?
If you get ill or something happens to you and you die, or you know you have to move out of the area, or there's a natural disaster or any number of things. So this is helping people to look at, well, what do you really need? And at this point, you know, I'm trying to make it as simple as possible for people so that it's not because like I said about the pictures, every step that you take, everything that you organize is a step closer to being done.
It's a step closer to having a richer, legacy. Having people not have to struggle to try and find things or be locked out of things because they don't know. Because like we said, even though I have still those remnants of paper that I'm quickly, you know, sending on its way. What about the things that are digital?
How do people know? How do people find that these are all really important questions? Because there are so many things that if your family doesn't know you have it, it could be years before you'll see that it's abandoned property. You know, you may be able to recover it some day, but is that what you want? I think so.
Mollie: So what is there like? You know, three pieces of advice that you might give and maybe three isn't the right number, but what advice would, you give for people who want to, you know, think about that. Like, so I'm 51. What advice would you have for someone my age? You know, knowing I have parents
Judy: Well, the first thing that I would do is I always ask people whether they've got their estate plan and their advanced medical directives in order.
And if they don't, today's the day to call up and make an appointment. Even if you make it in September or October or after the summer's over, make the appointment and get yourself ready. And resources like this book can help you gather the things that you need so that when you have that appointment, the the attorney and the estate planner will have the information they need to help guide you and then start thinking about, you know, if you have adults who are dependent on you, you know, grandparents or disabled adults living with you or little children, think about who's who's going to step up for them.
If you're not around. Because a lot of people say, well, I know, I know, I need to do all this stuff, but I don't know who I want to be Guardian for my children. Well, again, if you don't do that, then the court is going to have to step in and they might give you the exact person that you wouldn't want.
So make make some decisions. And if later on you find that you have something else that's better, you can always redo those documents at any time. And then you have a plan, you have the beginning of a plan, and then you can start gathering the information and start thinking about like, have I looked at my credit report lately?
That's another really great piece of advice. If you haven't looked at your credit report, since Covid, credit bureaus are allowing you to check your your credit report regularly, more regularly than just once a year. So look at your credit report that tells you all of the credit cards and revolving charge accounts and mortgages and all those people that you owe gather those bits of information so they know who all your utilities are and who all the what are all the things coming out of the checkbook or the credit card.
You can search those statements too, but the credit report will tell you this account's open. It's been paid for this many months. You know, usually 24 months of history. Those are really good places to start. Take care of your family. Take care of your your liabilities. And then I think the third piece is just just start, start somewhere.
Start with a small pile. Start with the things that you know. Don't worry if you don't have everything today, because every fact you add completes part of that book, completes part of that process, makes you more ready for whatever life's going to send your way.
Mollie: How do you pick a an attorney or, an estate planner? Are they one in the same thing, or are they two separate?
Judy: So financial planners do financial planning for your for your future. And then an estate planning attorney will help you craft the legal documents, the the wills, the trusts, the give you the right forms for the advanced directives or living wills or those kinds of things. And then, you know, remember that your will will become a public document when it's filed with the probate court.
So don't put things in your will that you don't want to be made public, like your passwords for login information for things so that you can have a separate document, a court. It's called a codicil where you write those instructions and those are left with those documents so that your executor or personal representative, as they're called, or your power of attorney, if you're still alive and ill and need someone to do those things for you, that they'll have those instructions and be able to work for you in those regards.
Mollie: This is such an important topic and I, I actually have met quite a few, estate attorneys. We have people, we have photo or excuse me, we have estate attorneys who clients to us occasionally, which I really think is a great thing when you're talking about such important financial planning and the other kinds of planning that have to be done.
I, you know, I think the pictures are like right up there. It's like your personal history, the legacy of your personal history that, you know, needs some work.
Judy: Right. Well, and the thing I worry about most now is, again, as I said, with things being all digital, if people haven't made a backup plan and they die and that account gets closed, all those things go away. So I'm sure you've taught people how to manage with those things and how to take them, and you know that can be part of your plan. But that shouldn't be the only place they exist.
Mollie: We in terms of digital digital files and having a plan for that, we have tended to recommend Forever Permanent Storage, which I, we haven't actually talked about that yet, but if you've seen anybody who's watched my videos knows that's part of it.
They can host privately the pictures, videos as well as PDF documents. And, we I feel really confident that that's a good digital archive. It is. You set up account managers who will then take it over and, you know, in 50 to 100 years, if there's no one who's passed that down, the company will work with, descendant to find the match, you know, make sure that they are a legal descendant and then give them access, not control, but access to the the information in the photos in there, which I think is, is is pretty unique.And an option out there for people and so the getting the word out is just the bigger challenge because. Right, right. Technology to do it. It's just people are busy and other things take priority.
Judy: So well, you know, I found a lot in organizing, having accountability groups for people that, you know, they're starting to do this process of gathering their documents or whatever it may be, that having to show up once a week and say what you did and knowing that you're going to be someone's going to ask you, well, you know, it's okay that things get in the way.
You know, you had business travel or, you know, one of your children got sick or whatever, but it keeps you on the path, it keeps you on the path. If you don't have that path ready to go, then it's just like, oh, it's like signing up for a gym membership with no plan to go. It's not really going to help you.
But if you, you know, and I think that's why starting small and, and not making it that I have to organize every photo under this roof today. Right. You know, I can maybe do two inches worth of photos before my brain starts to wander. And, you know, and then I'm like, oh, what am I doing here? Maybe it's time to stop.
Mollie: Good. Good advice. Is there do you is there any story that you have of helping someone that comes to mind, you know, with the documents towards the end? You know, being prepared does that? I know I probably just threw you right on the spot there, but, is there, you know, can you think of an example of someone who may have, benefited from your book or that you heard from?
Judy: Well, the success stories are really the people that I've worked with 1 to 1. Honestly. And again, it's that accountability. It's knowing that they're going to show up and we're going to talk about what's next and how you know what sections they've completed. I tried doing an online course that was self, self-paced. And it's not as effective as saying, okay, we're going to have this week where we're going to talk about, you know, start with the people, okay.
Who are all your people? You know, the doctors, the lawyers, the financial people, the family. Because if something happens, my mother in law is a good example. When we went when she was ill in Florida, we were in charge of taking her everywhere and doing everything with her for her. And we're trying to figure out who the doctors were.
And her system was scraps of paper and post-it notes and backs of envelopes and, you know, doctor B or Meg at Doctor C's office or. And who is this doctor? What does this doctor do? Oh, I don't know. So, you know, you don't want to become a private detective. But as I said, I think the people that I've worked with in the group, where there's a weekly accountability, it helps people to get through all of the data that they need to collect.
You know, and you always say, well, get organized and find money, because that usually happens to, when people go through the process and they're going through the books and the paper and the files, they find jewelry, they find appraisals, they find legal documents, they find all of these things. And I think, well, one of the things that we really want people to do is to gather things for their emergency file.
So there's a forest fire coming or there's flood coming, or there's a tornado coming. If you have all those documents together, you can take them with you, you know. Right. And we that's what we want. We want people to have that peace of mind.
Mollie: For sure. Peace of mind is such a like a, an elusive thing. And if people took the time to do the steps that you're outlining, I hear it even with pictures, you know, when we're done on the peace of mind is it's such a relief to know that that's taken care of.
Judy: So, exactly, exactly. Peace of mind. You know, that is the best pillow. Peace of mind. You sleep well at night knowing that all of those things are taken care of. Yeah, yeah. You know, when you wake up and it's kind of, oh, I should do that, I should do that. That's deep inside you. That's poking at you to do something, to take that first step to start.
Mollie: All right. Judy I've put into the chat area a link to her book on Amazon. And I'm going to add a couple other links here.
But my little copy and paste isn't quite working. So the book is in there okay. And you guys can check that out. I am going to, answer a few questions that have come up in our community. And, Judy, if it's okay, if you don't mind sticking around, be happy to. And then if anyone has questions that you want to throw into the comments, I'm sure Judy would be happy to answer those also for you.
So, Judy, author of Beyond the Estate Plans, professional organizer, joined us here for a bit, and I'll have you back on in a few minutes, okay?
Okay. As always with live with Mollie, I like to answer questions that people might have that have come up either during the last week or on our YouTube channel. And today I have two questions that I'm going to cover. One is from Valerie. She watched our organizing your photos once and for all. This is a great video from about three years ago, and I have since come to realize, of course, that you can't organize your photos once and for all.
It's just an ongoing process. So we take little bites like Judy said at a time. Anyway, Valerie to watch this video, and she wondered if she should keep her photos on her phone as well. So I believe that she has copied the pictures from her phone to a folder on her computer. That's, the system that we teach, and she's wondering once the photos are copied on to her computer, if she can delete them off the phone.
In the past, we always were deleting pictures off of our phone. Like, you know, ten, 15 years ago, our phones had very little storage and it was common for people to delete the pictures once they had them copied to their computer or CD, you know, things like that, and they would delete them. In today's world, I have seen a reluctance to delete pictures off of the smartphones once they've been copied to another place.
Mollie: So I have three options for people who are wondering if they should delete pictures off of their phone one. You. You just keep them all on your phone after copying them to your folder or uploading them to a cloud site. So this is the, what I guess you would say is the keeper of the photos on the phone.
The advantages to this are. Well, they might be handy for texting. They are another backup, potentially, but it really is outweighed by the cons where you have all this clutter building up on your phone so you could keep them on there. A lot of people do that. The second option is you delete them off of your phone.
If you delete them off of your phone, you do need to be sure you're following the 3 to 1 backup, system. And that means you have three copies, one on your computer. We recommend having a master pictures folder or what we call a photo estate folder. So you have one copy in that folder, and then it's backed up to an external hard drive.
So that's your second. And then you have it uploaded to cloud storage. We recommend Forever. But there's others out there that people are using. All right. So that's option two. You delete the pictures off of your phone after you ensure they're in three other places safe on your computer, backed up to the external hard drive and uploaded to the cloud.
The third option, if you're considering whether or not to keep pictures on your phone, is this you delete anything that's not important, and you you just keep a few photos on your phone that you want to have, either for reference or for quick access. There are some people who do that. I'm going to tell you, I think three quarters of the people I work with just keep everything on their phone and, and and that's okay.
You know, as long as you are ensuring you have a collection of your family photos on your computer and or in cloud storage, that is the set of pictures. You cannot rely on your phone as being the home of your family photo collection. It's just not practical. And if you're not careful planning, you know, like, Judy has talked about, your family could be locked out of your phone and locked out of your accounts with very difficult, and it's a very difficult process to get pictures out of an account that you cannot, that you're logged out of
People have been locked. People have been locked out of their own Google accounts. And it's been impossible to get back in. So always make sure your photos, the ones that are important to telling your story and your your family experiences together are preserved on your computer and backed up to a cloud storage. All right, so three options there.
And like I said it varies. And you might use some combination of it. For me personally I actually do keep my pictures on my phone from like the last seven years. And when you know we're going to a new year, I'm like, delete the the oldest year. And that just helps keep my phone under 200GB of photos and under the 200GB in iCloud, which is that break off where you go from 299 a month for the storage, up to 999 a month.
Mollie: All right. So I hope that helps. Valerie. And, other people who are wondering if they should keep their pictures on their phone. The next question that I have relates to scanning. All right. And, do you was talking about how she had help with scanning photos. We recommend using the Epson FastFoto Scan or 680 W scanner.
And we have videos on YouTube on how to use the scanner. It's really fast, and it's, a way to tackle a shoebox of photos and pay less than you would to professionally have them be scanned. So the question that arised or arose with, this scanner is from Miss Teresa and she's mentioning that when she was scanning her photos, and she's been doing it for over two years, she's having trouble saving images back to an older folder.
So this might be hard to picture, you know, with the way the question is worded here. But she she made a folder for her prom or maybe a daughter's prom in 2002. She made that folder a while ago, and she wants to scan additional pictures to it, and it's not working. Right. So I thought what I would do is just first show you how this scanner works.
I have a quick video here and you'll see the fast photo and how it scans. It's a feeder scanner, so check this out.
It's just you throw the stack in the top and it feeds out the bottom. Okay. And it's connected to software on your computer. You can see it on the screen there. And the software allows you to choose where you save the, the scans. And now I'm going to show you the scanning software and you'll kind of see, the question that she was asking.
So I'm going to just pause it here. On the right hand side, we have the software for the Epson fast photo, and you can see that there's a start scanning button in the, top left. And on the right there's a settings button. I'm also showing the folder that I'm scanning to. So this is a test. We are scanning to the scene folder.
All right. So I labeled the folder on my desktop scanning to scene folder test. And you can see here I have nine photos that I previously scanned into it. So now today I want to scan a new batch that goes with it. So in in our our question this was a prom photos and I just, using this test folder to demonstrate that you indeed can scan to the same folder even for years have passed.
So let's just watch here and you'll see I'm going to the settings and I click the folder to choose, scanning to the same folder. And I'm going to change the name of the the scans to the same as the folder. And then I'm going to pause. Here I am clicking on that yellow folder and you just see if I can back it up so that I can display results.
All right. When we were in the settings tab that was telling the software where to save the pictures to, okay. When we're in this top level view of the software and we click that yellow folder, we're just displaying the results of the scanning. So we're going to choose that folder scanning to the same test folder. And we'll see what's already in there.
So here I go scanning to the same folder. You can see that the photos are the same in there. And now I'm going to scan a new batch. So we're going to scan a little bit. And add I don't know ten photos to it. And I'll click done scanning. And you can see that those additional photos went right in the same folder.
And and they're also I'm just trying to get it right to that point. And if we have a little technical difficulty here, let's go right there. You can see on the left hand side, the new photos fell right into place in the same folder. And they also are showing in the display folder of the software. So to answer her question is you should absolutely be able to scan to the same folder.
It should not create a new folder at all. So hopefully you know, looking at the settings and the display folder will help you understand what is going on there. Okay. That is the questions that I wanted to cover from the past week, and I don't see any, new questions, but I will just, share some odds and ends here.
Mollie: Before we wrap up with Judy, we have in September, which is frighteningly around the corner, our Save Your Photos virtual bootcamp. And it's Friday, September 26th and Saturday the 27th. It'll be three hours on Friday evening and six hours on Saturday. They're also will be a, Monday night pre event workshop so that you can start planning ahead what you want to accomplish in the bootcamp and new for this year, we will be having our offices here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin open for people who would like to attend in person.
So you can attend virtually or in person. And either way, it's going to be a great time of getting some assistance, seeing what other people are doing and making progress on your photos. The other event that I wanted to mention is our great photo voyage with, Krista Kowalczyk and myself in February 2026. This cruise is really designed to help give people a non, I don't want to say non-threatening, a relaxing atmosphere to start tapping your toes into learning about saving photos and being able to relax at the same time.
Because organizing photos and relaxing usually don't go into the same sentence. So we have a great trip planned, for February, we'll have classes on the days that we're at sea, and then we stop in Coco Bay and Cozumel. There will be photo walks in port. Krista is a professional photographer, and she's really creative. It'll be fun to see what she has us doing on those strolls.
And, you can learn more about the cruise, at our website. And I will just type this in here real quick. The exploring.com cruise. And at the bottom of that page you can click on the link and you'll see the actual room and the opportunities you have to book. Okay. So we are really excited about that. And hope you will, consider joining us. All right. With that, let me just bring back on Judy. Okay, Judy,
Judy: I'm all ready to go on the cruise.
Mollie: I am too I think I could really use that right now. Well, I am so grateful that you, were able to join us today and your understanding about the technical difficulties earlier this week. Do you have, you know, any final thoughts you'd like to, to mention or share here before we wrap up?
Judy: Just it was a it was a great time. And I think you know, the fast photo 680 W is definitely the boss of this this realm. Having having one of those will speed things up and make them make so much sense. I even have, there's a setting where you can enhance the originals, like some of mine are so old, they're so yellow, and the it brings the colors back and makes them so nice again. And it's, it's a great thing. And, you know, I guess my, my one piece of advice is start today.
Mollie: I like it. All right. Judy we’lll wrap up. I so appreciate everybody who was able to join us today. And Judy, again, thank you for your expertise. I'm sure that will be helpful to people who are catching this later. All right everybody, we will sign off and we'll see you the next time. Bye bye.
