Well, we are on air now and we're going to give it a couple minutes to let people join. They kind of get an alert when YouTube goes live, so we'll see who's going to join us this evening. Lori, I'm so excited to have you here tonight. It's always fun to have you.
I'm happy to be here. Yay!
You're like—I feel like it's an odd thing to say. We haven't seen each other in person too often, but I feel like you're a sister in a couple of ways. You have a Forever business as well as you live in South Dakota, where my daughter is. So yeah, when we figured out that that was something we had in common, we're like, hey. You know, you sort of realize it's such a small world when all of a sudden you start recognizing where people come and go, and it's like, I've been there too.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, Sioux Falls is on the east side of the state, and you're on the west side, I think. So, more towards the central. So yeah. Yeah. Good, good, good.
All right. I see we do have some people joining. You are welcome this evening to say hello in the chat area. If you're joining us on either Facebook or YouTube, the chat area is your place to post a question if you like, or just say hello.
We'd love to know where people are from, and it makes it kind of fun. And we're really casual tonight because when you have friends on, it makes it a little easier. So I'll give it another few seconds, and then we'll get started here.
And I just want to point out Wisconsin is the craziest state. I want to know if South Dakota is like this. On Wednesday, we had 55 degrees, and the next day it was a snowstorm and it was like 15 degrees.
We have had an unusually mild winter here in South Dakota. And I'm not out by the Black Hills—I'm still about three hours from out in the Black Hills where the elevation is a little higher. So you do see snow out in that area. But in the central part, it's been strange what little snow we have.
Yeah. One of those 50-degree days—gone. Just gone. And now the wind is blowing and we're in a winter weather advisory. So who knows what will happen overnight. You never know.
We have someone, Steve, joining us from Salt Lake City.
Thanks for letting us know, Steve. I just spoke with a gentleman from Salt Lake City two days ago, and he said it was getting a little chilly there, but I think only in the 50s or maybe 40s. I don't really recall—my age, it's getting harder for me to remember those little details. But thank you for joining us tonight.
All right, you guys, I think we are going to go ahead and get started. This is a special edition of Live with Mollie. I work really hard to answer people's questions and make sure that they have what they need to work on their photos, save family memories, and so much more.
This evening I have Lori Lafferty joining us, and we're going to learn more about you in a bit and your photo organization project.
I do have a few announcements first, so I'm going to get that screen up here. If you've been following for a little bit, you may remember that we have a cruise coming up in February, and there is still time to join this.
The cruise is coming up February 16th through the 21st, and my friend Krista Cole, Chuck, and I are going to do some little classes on board. And then for the walks during the places that we stop—which is CocoCay and actually Cozumel got changed to the Bahamas—if you want to know more, you can definitely reach out.
I'm going to put links in the chat area here for both this and a new live course that I am launching this January.
So let me tell you a little bit about this new course. Usually every three or four years I need to redo my course, and I do it live so that I can make sure I'm answering the questions that people are asking currently. And then I update my materials.
So this is a program that starts like a week from Monday. It's all recorded, and there's support for 12 months in our community. And the link is in there if you want to check that out.
I really think the key to saving photos is to work on them routinely, and that's why I offer these classes. Not only do we have classes, we have workshop time, and then we also have specific three-hour workshops where people just work on their projects—whether it's print or digital organizing—and then they get stuff done.
So those are some of the things that are coming up. If you are watching this on YouTube after the fact or Facebook and you have questions, you can always put another question in and I'll answer it on a future show.
If you're catching this on Spotify, I highly recommend that you subscribe to our YouTube channel because occasionally, like this evening, I'm going to have some graphics and we're going to be showing some pictures.
All right. Those are the things that I wanted to quickly cover. So now I want to introduce you to Lori Lafferty.
She is the owner of Photo Legacy Digital Solutions. She has her own memory preservation business, and she is a Forever Ambassador. She and I met because we were on the Forever advisory committee together, and that was for three years. It started after the pandemic, and we got to share a lot of our insight as well as test different features that Forever was going to be introducing.
So Lori, how long have you been helping people with their memories?
This year—2026—is going to mark year ten for me. And it's crazy because these ten years have just flown by. It's amazing the people that I've met and the people that I've helped. This is such a need. No matter where you're at, everybody needs that help. You'll hire somebody to help you with your taxes—why wouldn't you consider hiring somebody to help you with your photos?
Definitely. So Lori and I were just chatting in general, and she mentioned she had a project she was working on. She sent me this photo because I just thought it was so interesting—her story.
You were starting off with making piles: for saving, for ditching, or maybe—the yes, no, maybe strategy. Tell me more about that.
Time is so precious for me because I have a lot of irons in the fire. So when I'm taking a box out of memories, it's a mismatch of all sorts of things. And I was like, okay, there's got to be an easier way to do this. So let's make it super easy: yes if I want to keep it and digitize it, no if I don't, and maybe if I'm not sure.
Well, the maybe pile got really, really large.
And that's usually what happens. So do you have any sense of what to do with the maybe pile?
The maybe pile was okay at first—maybe I need to ask my aunt who is in this photo. Sometimes it was duplicate prints from when my mom would order double or triple prints. And you don't know what was digitized already and what wasn't, so things went into the maybe pile.
Hence the reason the maybe pile can get out of control really fast.
So I want to talk a little bit about a system.
When you're working with a family photo collection—and that includes photos, videos, audio, newspaper articles, and memorabilia—there are three general tasks. Organize, digitize, and preserve.
Organize comes first. If you digitize first, you end up asking yourself, did I already scan this?
Digitize is second.
Preserve is third. That includes adding metadata, creating photo books, and saving everything in the place you’ve chosen for long-term access.
I teach organizing in three stages. First, sort everything into major categories or decades—quickly, without overthinking it. Second, break those down into years. Third, divide into months or events.
This process helps you identify duplicates, find clues written on the backs of photos, and avoid redoing work.
Memorabilia like newspaper articles usually get set aside temporarily so they don’t slow the photo organizing process. Eventually, they get reunited with the relevant photos.
The goal is to create clear batches. Each batch becomes a scanning batch, and each batch gets its own folder structure—decades, then years, then months.
That structure can be uploaded directly to Forever so the scans come back already organized.
At one point I lost audio because I accidentally muted myself—but the point still stands.
The big takeaway is not to work box by box in isolation. You need to see the whole collection so everything fits together logically.
We then looked at several examples of photos, slides, negatives, newspaper clippings, and memorabilia, and talked about how stories emerge when you slow down and organize thoughtfully.
Lori shared how meaningful it was to be able to show certain photos to her parents before they passed, and how the next generation is often more interested than we expect.
We also talked about how to handle newspaper articles, large items, and scanning options—libraries, FamilySearch centers, professional services, or apps as a last resort.
We covered viewer questions about moving photos from iPhones to computers, deleting photos from phones, organizing videos alongside photos, and how to manage project files separately from original files.
We also discussed digital photo frames and why using a smart TV with a USB drive is often a better option.
As we wrapped up, Lori shared this advice:
Do not wait to try to go through your photo mess or your family’s mess. Make an afternoon of it. Make it something you do regularly. Just like maintaining a car, you need to do maintenance on your memories.
Maintenance on your memories.
I love it.
All right. We are going to wrap it up. Next Thursday at 6:30 will be our next episode. I haven’t determined a major topic yet—possibly something with AI.
Lori, thank you so much for joining.
And to everyone watching, thank you. I’m going to wrap up the stream, and I hope to see you guys again soon.
