Good evening. I am going to just let a minute go by here so that people can join our live stream this evening. We did have a little bit of a snafu with our internet speed, and I'm not quite sure if it's all working well, but I do see people are joining, and I'm so grateful to have you be here this evening.
If you are watching on YouTube or Facebook, please say hi in the chat so I can say hello back and know where people are tuning in from. It's always fun to hear where people are watching from. If you are catching this replay on Spotify or another place, you definitely want to go to YouTube because that is where I will have the visuals for you to see in the program.
So we'll just let another minute or two go. Well, not another minute or two, but I would love to know if the broadcast here is working. So if you can say hello in the chat, it helps me make sure that our internet connection is great.
It has been about two months since I've been on with Live With Molly, and many of you probably know that my mother passed away about three weeks ago. I'm experiencing something that I have helped so many clients through over the years, and it's interesting to be in the process myself of going through my mom's home with my sister. There's so much there that you forget about when you're away from the home, the memories from growing up and all of that.
So I'm really excited about our program tonight because it kind of combines my experience as a photo organizer, a story preserver, and all of that. I’m just so grateful for your guys’ patience with me in these last months when I haven't been online.
Okay, I see that Alice is here. Hi, Alice. Thank you so much for joining tonight. And Steve, good to see you. Salt Lake City, I was just talking with a client of mine from Salt Lake City the other day. I love it there, by the way. And Carol, thank you so much from New York. It’s good to be back.
I'm hoping to get back on track and be with you guys because saving photos and memories is important. For those of us who love our photos, we need some motivation and community to keep on it, and understand that life gets in the way. Sometimes projects get set to the side, but we can always come back. And that's what I'm here for, to help motivate you.
So thank you. I want to say hi to Delores. Thank you for your emails. I know I owe you an email response back, and I will definitely make sure that your daughter-in-law gets on our Forever mailing list. I'm going to say hi to Gary. He has been so gracious to invite me to be a co-presenter with him in Green Bay.
I love chatting with all of you different people. The experiences that we have in saving our memories are different, and we all learn something from each other. Gary’s been great. We've talked to quite a few people in his classes up there, over a hundred. The need is big out there.
So I want to welcome you to Live With Mollie. It is May 7th, and we have a program here tonight where I'm going to share a little bit of my experience with my mom and spending time cleaning the house out. I have taken so many pictures of stuff, and I can't tell you how much I'm going to have to clean up, but that's all right.
I’m going to say a quick hello to Bill Streator. He is in Racine, which is sort of my hometown. I live on the north side. But Bill, good to see you here too.
Let me tell you that I do have a few announcements I wanted to share with you because I always want to be sure people have opportunities to learn and work on their photos.
First of all, if you have questions this evening, I'll try to answer them. I normally try to do that in Live With Mollie. If you've got questions, throw them in the chat and I will work hard to answer all of them. And if I can't, we'll talk about it on a future episode.
Then I want to mention that a week from tonight, May 14th, is a call that I do once a month. It’s for Forever. For those of you who are familiar, Forever is the photo preservation site that I recommend for clients. We are ambassadors for Forever.
I can't tell you what a blessing it's been during this time of working with my mom's photos and the objects in her house, how useful it is in this situation. I certainly have clients who don't use Forever, and I'm always willing to answer questions on any software. I'm pretty much able to chime in on something if you've got a question that's not related to Forever.
Now, if you do want to know more about Forever, I have a community with a free access group for Forever Resources. You can see the upcoming calls, and I put in new information that I learn. We can post questions and things like that. So it’s a way to get help from me almost any time.
Most of the time people are just coming to the calls once a month. The first link is for the Forever Free Resources. When you register for it, you can go to the workshops area and join for the monthly call. Not everybody RSVPs, but it helps me plan.
I also have the recordings from the last four months in there so you can catch up. We talk about so many things related to saving memories and strategies and things like that. So that is free for people who are using Forever already or if you just want to learn more and see what it can do for you.
The next thing I wanted to mention is the Pix Plan Community. If you want to be involved with our full community where I have one-, two-, and three-hour photo workshops where people are working on their pictures and getting stuff done, you’ll want to check that out.
This is really important to me, that people have an opportunity to work on their pictures and get answers. I have been teaching for a long time, and I find that people take all these notes and they’re excited in the moment, but when push comes to shove and you're working on your pictures, it's hard to anticipate all the things that come up, especially with digital pictures.
That’s why I have these workshops so people get progress and get work done.
The last big news I have is we have set our cruise for 2027. We got back from our cruise in February, and it was our first time. It was so much fun. The beauty of being in a group like this is you're with people who love photos in some way, shape, or form. We'd love to have you join us.
All right. Those were my announcements.
I don't know how many of you have heard this before, but when we started Pixologie back in 2013, my friend and mentor Zach and I came up with the word “Pixologie,” and we liked it. We came up with a definition something like this:
“Biology is the study of life, and Pixologie is the study of life through your photos.”
Your story matters.
We used that for our marketing for quite a few years, and it’s still near and dear to my heart because photos are just a conduit to memories and stories and so much more.
Now that I’m in the stage of clearing out my mom’s home, I’ve realized too that the objects in the house, the papers in the house, there's so much attached to that as well. The memories and the feelings and things that are long forgotten.
I've seen this in quite a few of my clients over the last few years where these photos bring up stories that need to be investigated further.
I'm not quite sure how many stories I can save of my mom and dad’s, but I really have a handful.
I want to start off by showing you this sweater. I think this sweater is about 50 years old. My grandma Hartman knitted it. I actually tried it on, and my daughter said I looked like I was wearing a Barbie doll sweater. The little balls were popular back then.
This sweater is just one of a few knitted pieces from my grandmother that's still at my mom’s house. I was telling my aunt about it, and she said, “You know, your mom is the only one that got sweaters.”
My aunt said, “Mom never made us sweaters.” One time my Aunt Ruth asked my mom, “Why do you get all the sweaters?” And my mom said, “Because I asked her to make them for me.”
I would never have known that story if we hadn't been talking about this.
In one of the drawers we were going through, I found this little flyer, just copied knitting instructions for this sweater. Of course I had to take a picture of that.
What was more interesting than the knitting instructions were all the notes on the back of it.
There was a note about Sister Donna and a Casio. We had to rent a French horn for me back in fourth grade, and Sister Donna was my band teacher. There was a note about the Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds. I have that book at my house, and it’s got a sheet of bird stamps in it.
My sister and I are birding now. Some of that love for being outdoors and birds comes from my dad. He was a super outdoorsman.
She also had a phone number for Schlitz. My dad worked for Schlitz in their can plant. We had so much Schlitz memorabilia, you wouldn't believe it.
Then she had a note about “three steaks, two TV dinners, mushrooms, and a Coke.” That probably was a special evening dinner. Me and my sister, back in the late 70s, thought having a TV dinner was a super treat.
Then she had a longer note about fault and trying to let little faults go by and look for what’s good. My mom struggled through life with anxiety and some things, and she had notes like this all over.
But what was really striking was underneath it she wrote:
“Are you satisfied with me as a daughter-in-law?”
And then:
“Perfectly satisfied.”
So I think she asked my Grandma Hartman if she was happy with her as a daughter-in-law, and my mom actually wrote that down.
This means a lot to me.
That’s why I go through every little bit and piece in the house, whereas my sister would really like to move on with cleaning and all of that. So I've had to turn my optimism and love of stories off a little bit so I don’t drive her nuts.
Remember: not everybody is emotionally as attached to things. We cannot expect our family members to be as excited about or enjoy the sentimental stuff. I’m not offended, and I just have to respect that.
That knitting story reminds me that these ordinary objects have meaning and stories, and I like to save them.
So I’m going to show you a couple other examples, and I want you to think about this if you have objects you're wondering about saving or memorabilia.
It’s okay. These are meaningful sentimental items. Even if no one else cares. Even if you don't care about this in two years, it’s okay. We care right now. We’re going to do this little bit of documentation.
We are going to be looking at some items from my mom’s sewing machine.
This pincushion, I remember it from all the years my mom sewed costumes and made gifts for people. She had these strawberries, and she had a whole stack of them in the drawer in her sewing machine.
There was this note that said, “God Bless America.” My mom was so patriotic. I can't tell you how many patriotic baskets and decorations we have.
Then there were these pieces of fabric. She made chickens and roosters and would put a brick in them and stuff them tight so they became doorstops for people.
Just seeing this eyelet lace, it was emotional to hold it.
I didn’t throw it away. I put it back in the drawer because hopefully someone will buy her sewing machine. I cannot sew, and my sister says the machine is too old and clunky.
But anyway, I have a photo, and I can look at this and immediately feel warm memories.
Here are those strawberries. She must have made a whole bunch ahead of time. I probably will save the strawberries because holding them meant a lot. I might eventually throw them away, but I have a couple photos and it will be okay.
What’s really neat is tying them back to the pictures you actually have. Because I have been more organized than most people, I could go right away to the photo where the strawberries were and look at that.
Now let us walk downstairs to the basement where you can see a whole bunch of stuff.
Right here is a book called How to Make $100,000 a Year in Desktop Publishing. That was my first business. My mom took a picture of me, and to see that there was cool.
Mixed in there was all sorts of other things. I found a 1950s cake decorating book that was my grandmother’s, and I found my grandmother’s recipe book where all her handwritten recipes are. So cool.
Another thing I found was a book called America the Beautiful with the words of Henry David Thoreau. I was like, “Why do we have this?”
Then I realized there was a sticker on the inside that said it was from Tupperware Home Parties. My mom sold Tupperware the first year they were married.
This is the only evidence I have that she was a Tupperware lady. We have a few Tupperware pieces, but I don't know if they were the ones she sold or bought herself.
If I had just thrown these books away, I would have missed that.
Maybe it’s totally unimportant, but it means something to me right now.
So I have the book. I’ll probably scan that page.
There are different ways to preserve memories. You can take photos, you could scan documents or pages, and it really doesn’t matter. It’s up to you how you want to do it.
I have been at clients’ homes where they sit on the floor and just take pictures of stuff with no regard to the background or how it looks. They don’t care. It’s just preserving it.
So you can take photos of items, or you can set them aside for scanning. You have options.
My mom worked for First Wisconsin Bank for 42 years. She loved her job. She saw all the name changes. First Wisconsin became Firstar Bank and then U.S. Bank.
She had these little metal plaques celebrating milestones. One celebrated the First Wisconsin name change to Firstar Bank. Another celebrated 35 years of distinguished service.
I put some of those items together with her First Wisconsin Zippo lighter and a little porcelain cat she liked. I didn’t keep them, but I have a photo of them.
I have photos tied back to all the years she worked at the bank.
Now I want to answer a question from Delores:
“Is taking a picture or scanning better for documents and letters?”
My answer is that I like taking pictures of documents when I have a variety of them and don’t need to scan every one. If I want to preserve individual letters, then I would scan them.
Sometimes it depends on the volume.
My mom has certificates for all the five-year anniversaries she had. Those I will scan because a scan is a much better representation.
I probably could have scanned the metal plaques too, but I didn’t want to scratch my scanner, so I photographed them.
Carol commented that handwritten notes are the most precious, and they really are.
As I bring these things together, if I was working with folders on my computer or trying to put all this onto an external hard drive, there is no way I would enjoy the experience of saving my mom’s memories as much as when I look at it in Forever and can build onto it so easily.
I created an album called “My Mom’s Career Album.” I have her early photos in there, photos from her baby shower, her 30th anniversary, her 35th anniversary, and all the items I photographed.
I just love looking at all of this in one place.
I don’t think there’s anything that comes close to what it is to look at it in Forever and see the items laid out there and the story of it. I’ll be able to fill in more when I have time.
If I change devices or want to work on my phone or iPad, I can access it because it’s an internet site.
Sorry for the pitch for Forever, but I’m just telling you my experience. Bringing my mother and father’s items together would not be the same if I couldn’t look at it this way.
My dad was an outdoorsman. When he died ten and a half years ago, all of his files stayed at the house.
I found environmental education, forestry, land management, tree planting documents, all the way back from the 60s. I didn’t realize he was so interested in studying it.
I found fish and wildlife documents. He was in the Outdoorsmen Club. He loved photographing things. That’s probably why my sister and I are interested in photos.
These are examples of documents I don’t think I want to scan every one of. Some are many pages. I’m trying to capture the essence of what my dad was interested in.
I do think there is historical value in some of this, and I contemplated donating some of it to a historical society. I just don’t know if I have the time and energy to divide it up that much.
I found documents related to Horicon Marsh and hunter education. I also found that my dad had a shotgun shell reloading business.
He studied accident reports from Wisconsin and taught hunter education.
There’s a picture of him at the Schlitz Sports Club in a skeet shooting competition. Eventually I’ll create an album for him as well.
When my cousins learned of my mom’s passing, one of them said he’d like to see what my dad had from the reloading business. My cousin came over, and I arranged everything so it looked nice and took a photo of it.
Then I called the shooting range where my dad was the first hunter safety instructor and asked if anyone would be interested in the materials. They were happy to take them.
My dad had donated many of his rifles to their hunter safety program years ago.
To close the story out, I took a photo of my husband carrying the last box into the range. My mom had written on the box:
“DeHaas bullets etc.”
I don’t know, it’s giving me closure.
It does not matter what anybody else thinks.
When I have clients who say, “Nobody’s going to care,” I say, “You care, and that’s all that matters.”
Alice asked:
“Do you use captions for all your photos?”
To caption every photo sounds like a lot of work. I do not add descriptions unless I have a very specific purpose.
This picture of my husband carrying the box, nobody would know what it means to me. But I don’t know that I care about that.
These pictures will be in a folder related to my dad’s hunter safety materials, and I think that context is enough.
I don’t take the time to add captions. There’s too much other stuff to do.
I do like that in Forever you can add a description to the album and give additional context.
I want to say hi to Mary Jo. Thank you for the card. And Donna, thank you so much for joining and for your kind words.
I donated all the old Tupperware to Goodwill already, but when I found the Henry David Thoreau gift book from her Tupperware group, I thought, “Oh my gosh, I need photos of the Tupperware.”
I found two pieces left, took a picture of them, and blurred out the background with portrait mode on my phone.
I like the picture. That’s all that matters.
The moral of all this is that photographing the items really helps me feel better about donating stuff or throwing it away. I feel relieved that I have some evidence if I ever wanted to show somebody.
Realistically, who’s going to ask about my mom’s Tupperware? Nobody.
And when my kids look at this someday, they’re going to be like, “You saved everything digitally.”
That’s so much better than leaving people with boxes of items they can’t let go of.
Lincoln asked:
“How do you recommend sharing Forever albums with family when everyone’s in the same room?”
You can connect your computer with a USB cable to a television, and whatever you’re showing on your computer will display on the TV.
Forever also has a Forever app on Amazon Fire Stick.
If you join me next Thursday, I want to talk more about sharing albums because I have another cool tool I’ve been using for clients.
Delores commented that she wished she had done this kind of documentation.
Do not second-guess yourself. We have what we have.
Five years ago, I probably wouldn’t have done this either. But working with clients who inherited larger sentimental items caused me to think about it differently.
I don’t think it’s intuitive to take photos of stuff, especially when you're dealing with grief.
One thing I’ll mention is that if you know your family member had a special interest in something, go get examples online and add them in.
I have a client who worked on a family farm growing up. We didn’t have much from that period, so we found YouTube videos of the machinery he had used and brochures of the farm equipment.
We built an archive around that.
If I wanted to, I could probably go find banjo music. My dad played the banjo for a few years and could play “Dueling Banjos” at one point.
There are so many things you can do and rabbit holes you can go down, but you can add things that weren’t necessarily inherited items to help tell the story.
Another question came in about naming folders for day-to-day family photos.
The question was:
“What would you recommend naming folders of day-to-day photos shot at home with several family members in the shots?”
I teach people to organize chronologically, years and months or special events nested within them.
If you start naming everyone in the pictures, it becomes a horrible job. The names get too long and confusing.
The best answer is that if you want photos of specific people, you should use facial recognition software.
Apple Photos has it. Forever has it. Google Photos has it.
You want to use facial recognition to find pictures of people. It’s much more powerful.
Trying to rename folders based on who is in them is not the best approach unless it’s a specific special event like a wedding.
Save that information for facial recognition or tagging.
The last question came from Grace about what to do with large old framed photos when there’s nowhere to hang them and nobody in the family wants the frames.
If the portrait is important, you want to get it digitized somehow.
We worked on a project with large oval convex portraits. There were no other versions of the images, so our job was to carefully remove them from the frames, photograph them professionally, and then crop them into an oval digitally.
If you don’t want the frames, you can donate them to Goodwill. There can be resale value in vintage frames.
If they’re in bad shape, throw them away safely, especially if there’s glass involved.
And you can feel okay about that if you preserved the picture somehow.
We are unbelievably coming up to an hour. It’s almost 7:30, so it’s time for me to start thinking about wrapping up.
If you have any questions, now’s your time to throw them in the chat. Otherwise, you’ll have to send them to me another way.
I very much appreciate you all joining me tonight. I actually had a record amount of people here, and it means a lot to be on the journey of saving memories with you.
You’re kind of on my journey now of saving my own memories, and it means the world to me.
The next Live With Mollie won’t be until Thursday, June 4th at 6:30 Central Time. I have some things I need to take care of with the house, and I want to be well prepared for our next program.
All right, you guys, that is it for tonight. I don’t see any other questions.
I just want to say thank you again for joining. And hi to Layton from St. Louis.
With that being said, that is it. I want to thank you. Have a wonderful rest of the month, and hopefully we’ll see some of you at the Forever call next week.
Those of you who want to join me in June, I will be here then as well.
Thank you so much. Happy memory saving, and take care.
Bye-bye.
