A few years ago, my wife and I were cleaning out our basement and discovered we had totes and totes full of artwork by our four children (now all grown) which we haven’t looked at in years.
We were trying to clear out things we no longer needed so we could downsize, but of course, we couldn’t bear to part with these masterpieces — drawings, paintings, posters, sketches, even book reports.
Then we had a revelation. We could have the best of both worlds — making space for our move while also preserving these memories forever.
We bought a scanner and got to work, learning a lot along the way. For instance, some pieces were too large for the scanner, but we learned how to use software that would scan the artwork in pieces and stitch them seemlessly together. Well, it wasn’t seemless at first, but through trial and error, we got them to look very close to the original works.
We saved all these digital files to a hard drive, sorting them into folders for each of our kids. But of course, they still weren’t fully protected. What if the hard drive was lost to theft or fire? Or we simply misplaced it in our move? We knew we also had to have a Plan B, so we set up a safe storage spot on the web, which gave us full peace of mind.
Having the files on hard drives is great, but what happens in ten years when technology has moved on and future computers can’t use today’s hard drives? That’s when having the files saved to “the cloud” truly pays off.
We also discovered we were frequently looking at the artwork, having our TV display them with a few easy clicks, or flipping through them on our phones while at dinner with the grandparents. Suddenly there were many opportunities to enjoy these memories all over again — things we couldn’t do with the pieces forgotten in those basement totes.
With our project complete, and having figured out along the way how to speed things up in scanning, saving and organizing, we realized we had learned something that could benefit many other families. That led us to create Yesterday Saved, and we’re happy to put our experience of preserving our family’s precious memories to work for yours.
You don’t have to choose between downsizing and preserving your keepsakes. If you live in southeast Michigan, Yesterday Saved can help you have both. Reach out to us today and we’ll get started!