Memories in Focus Preserving Our Photographic Past

Caught amidst a snowstorm's unexpected charm at Chicago O'Hare, I, Marcy Backhus, transformed travel delays into a stage for reflection and storytelling. Experience the whimsical 'snow plow ballet' through my eyes and join in the childlike wonder as we witness the magic of a snow-melting machine. But it's not all about the frosty delays; this episode invites you on a heartfelt journey through the corridors of memory as we tackle the sentimental task of managing photo legacies. Inspired by my friend Katie's notion, I'll guide you through choosing between preservation methods and curating family mementos that resonate deeply with our narratives.

Have you ever found yourself the keeper of a box brimming with old photos, unsure where to start? Together, we'll navigate the emotional minefield of sorting through these snapshots of the past, offering actionable strategies to ease the process. I'll share insights on discerning the meaning from the forgotten and elaborate on the latest scanning technologies to help transition your memories into the digital age. We'll explore creative avenues for sharing these treasured pieces of history, from digital family trees to physical scrapbooks, all the while weaving in the emotional threads of personal anecdotes like my parents' wind chimes.

As we sift through the tangible pieces of our family's journey, we confront the emotional weight of deciding which items to hold close to. I recount the bittersweet act of parting with precious keepsakes and the liberation of cherishing the memories they represent over their physical form. This episode invites us to find comfort in simplicity—embracing the stories behind our heirlooms without succumbing to the clutter. Together, we'll celebrate the art of honoring our past, preserving our heritage, and sharing it with the warmth and connectivity that only actual storytelling can foster.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hello and welcome to the AJA for Sissy's Podcast. My name is Marcy Backes and I am your host. Well, I hope wherever you are it's warm. I am not in Chicago, but I'm also not in Hawaii. I am in Denver and it's freezing here too, so it's been snowing all morning. I'm recording this on Martin Luther King Day and I've been here all weekend helping my son, and it's been cold. I had quite the experience getting out of the airport and I'll share that with you in a bit. But I hope it is warm where you are and if not, if you're in it, warm and cozy, get some warm, sit down, relax and listen to this episode of AJA for Sissy's. We're going to talk today about what do you do with all those photos that you inherit or you may have yourself, and my friend, katie, gave me this idea, so I researched it this week. I got some pretty good ideas that I'll share with you, and let's get started. Well, wow, what a week.

Speaker 1: 1:18

My last week was quite the busy week. At the beginning of the week, my son asked if I could come help him do some things here in Denver this weekend, and I said, of course, and got my plane flight. Figured everything out, figured out when I was going to come home and at that time had no idea that there was going to be such a freeze drop over the United States. So I was flying out Friday morning at an 8.30 flight out of Chicago O'Hare and in the morning the snow started and down in the city there wasn't anything and Craig and I I get on the freeway and bam, quite the snowstorm. So that's my first real driving experience in a snowstorm. But I did fine. Got to the airport, everything on my app, everything was saying flights on time, flights on time. I mean it didn't look that bad. Well, sure enough, my flight got canceled. So I get a little note click here to rebook your flight. So I didn't have to wait in any of those lines or anything. But the next flight wasn't till 8.30 that night, which left me in the airport for a good 12 hours or more. So I thought, well, I could do that. So I click the button, get my seat and I commenced spending. I got in the airport at 6.30 in the morning for my flight at 8.30. And I'm now got to entertain myself in the Chicago O'Hare airport for the entire day. So I find a place to sit and I'm watching.

Speaker 1: 2:55

I don't know if you've ever seen this really cool machine. So it's a snow melter, so they pull it up, so all the so. Let me backtrack a little bit here. So all of the snow plows are out and the reason that flights are shut down is because the snow is coming down so fast that the snow plows cannot plow fast enough. But watching this amazing snow plow I called it a snow plow ballet because I don't know how else to explain it Not only just where the gates are, but out on the entire field. So it was a very interesting thing to watch.

Speaker 1: 3:27

But, as you know, they pile up the snow into piles. Well, if you're going to do that in a place like Chicago, that's going to stay cold for the next two months. They're never going to melt. So they bring in this truck that's got like this open thing in the middle and you see steam coming out of it because it's hot, and they scoop up the snow and they put it in there and it melts into like this slush that comes out the bottom. Well, let me tell you, if you had kids and you were stuck in the airport and you were smart enough to be over where I was sitting. These kids were loving watching the scooper scoop up the snow and put it in and it melt and it shoot out this slushy ice mixture. It was pretty interesting. And I had this cute little, probably 18 month old, in red and white stripe, I'm sure Christmas jammies just plastered on the window, and I know that window was cold. So that's how I spent part of my day.

Speaker 1: 4:22

And then you get to this point where you find a really good seat and you don't want to get up because I'm alone, so I don't have anybody to watch my luggage or my seat, and I didn't want to lose my seat. Finally a pilot sat next to me and I thought, ooh, that's trustworthy. So I asked him if he'd watch my jacket, because I know for a fact they can't watch suitcases. So he said no problem, and so I was able to run to the restroom and come back to my great seat. Finally I decided I was hungry enough and I had to give up my seat and go find some food, and then found another place to sit and just kind of wandered around the airport for hours. Well then, they kept changing the gate for my 830 flight, and so I just kind of stayed in one spot, charged my phone, watched some TV. Thank God for technology when you're trapped in a situation like that.

Speaker 1: 5:14

And then my flight got delayed. My 830 flight, 9 o'clock, 930, 10. Finally 10 o'clock. So I get to the gate and we're all waiting and I'm a gold member with American, so they automatically put you on the upgrade list. But rarely do I ever get upgraded to first class unless I'm with Craig. And so I was talking to a girl next to me. She had been with me at the gate in the morning and we were laughing. And, sure enough, she got upgraded and I'm watching the list and I'm number eight on the list and they get to number seven and stop Like crap. I was hoping I'd get first class just for my 15 hours 15 hours I was in the airport.

Speaker 1: 5:59

So we board the plane, we get on the plane and I'm in an exit row. Sweet, I'm happy. I'm on the aisle in an exit row. That's my next best seat, love that seat. And no one sits next to me. Everybody's on the plane. So I'm like I have a whole exit row to myself. I'm feeling pretty good about myself. And here comes a guy down the aisle. Mrs Backes, yes, we have a seat for you up front. Oh my gosh, I was so excited I finally I got my upgrade and it was the day I needed it. After being in the airport.

Speaker 1: 6:31

So I gather my belongings and this lady looks at me. She goes are they kicking you off the plane? I was like no, I got a seat up front. I just wanted to say so long suckers. But I didn't say that, just thought it. It was enough to think it. I just got up there, had a nice cheese platter, a nice cup of coffee and a mug and got to Denver at like I don't know, 11 o'clock at night. Alec picked me up.

Speaker 1: 6:59

We headed out in very cold weather I think it was a negative eight or something and I said to him thank God I live in Chicago now, because if I had flown here from California I would be so ill prepared for this weather. But now, living in Chicago, I have all the appropriate gear which I had. I have my great coat, had my earmuffs earmuffs for me, with my short hair, are essential and gloves. So I was good to go and we drove out to the hotel. The weather wasn't great, but at least the rows were clear and I said to Alec we're getting off the on rampant, what in the morning? I'll go. Are you hungry? He goes. Yeah, I go, he goes. Oh, I think there's a deltaco across from the hotel, so we drove through deltaco. You know, when you're young you can eat two burritos at night. I did not get any food, but I had my lovely cheese platter on the plane, so I was fine.

Speaker 1: 7:51

But we finally got to sleep at about two o'clock in the morning and we did get up early. We had some things to do. So we got all that done, went out for a great dinner and then the next day, yesterday, sunday, I stayed home in the hotel. I did some swimming, got my exercise in Alec, went out and did what he had to do and we had another great dinner.

Speaker 1: 8:13

And then we came back and we watched I don't know on Netflix if any of you have watched it, but I recommend it highly, unless you have a squeamish factor but that movie about the flight that crashed in the Andes and in 1972, and 16 people survived by the end and and they were rescued. We all know that. So I'm not I'm not giving you a, I'm not ruining the ending of the movie, but it's really good. But if you have a squeamish factor, I the the you know these days they do a crash. And boy did they make that crash look real and very, very scary. I told Alec we're going to have some serious nightmares tonight. Add some weird dreams. I think we're a tribute to that and a few other things. But that's what's been going on with me.

Speaker 1: 9:04

And so now here I am, I'm in Denver, I'm supposed to fly out at 5 30am tomorrow morning. I know I know 5 30am. Well, it was. I could get it with cheap amount of points, so I'm cheap when it comes to using points. Plus, it put me back in Chicago at 9 30 and I thought I might be able to get to the gym, but doesn't for my class. But it doesn't look that way. It's been snowing consistently here all day.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Today. Alec is at the store. He has his new truck and he's getting snow tires. We drove around in the snow for a couple days and realized that snow tires are important. So you put them on in the winter. If you're in California or you're someplace warm and you don't know this, you put them on during the winter months and then you take them off and you put your other tires on and you store your tires in the garage. So that's how that works. So Alec should be home later today. Hopefully he'll stop by Del Taco and bring food back, because I'm not going anywhere until probably 3 o'clock in the morning when I have to head to the airport for my flight.

Speaker 1: 10:05

Unless they cancel that today, denver is not supposed to be bad tomorrow. Chicago is bad for the next like five or six days. It's kind of sad because when I'm leaving here I'm not going someplace warmer. I'm actually going someplace colder, but this is where I've chosen to live. I'm working on up diligently. Today I need to talk to my best friend Lynn, but I'm working on my trip to Arizona and then to Palm Desert, so to get myself a little warmth during the months of February and late January.

Speaker 1: 10:37

My birthdays this week I'll be turning 63, january 18th I will be 63 years old. I don't know how that happened. I don't know how this happened to me, but I'm still the youngest one in the family, by 8, 10 and 12 years. So ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha ha, I will always be the youngest. It's interesting because in this group of ladies that I've met and most of them are older than me.

Speaker 1: 11:03

I was talking about how I always feel so young, and I think it's because I'm the youngest in the family. I never feel like a grown up. I don't know if any of you have that feeling, if you're somewhere else in the birthing order, I don't know, but I just never feel grown up. I don't think I ever will. It's not something I'm complaining about because it makes me feel good. Actually, now that I'm feeling really good and healthy and working on my mental health and all of that this year, I think it's a good thing to feel young and to never feel grown up. Being a grown up is not great. I don't know if you've seen that meme of that poor little girl crying hysterically in the back seat of the car and the mom says what's the matter with you today? She goes I don't want to be a grown up. I don't blame her. Being all grown up is not fun. So that's what's been happening with me.

Speaker 1: 11:55

We'll see how my adventure goes on my way home. Hopefully, if they're going to cancel my flight, they cancel it tonight and not when I'm at the airport, so I have no reason to hurry up and get home. So if they cancel it, no problem. I'd rather stay in the hotel and figure it out from here than roam around an airport for 15 hours again. And yes, craig could have come got me and I could have gone back home. But then the chance of me not getting back to the airport because, like my flight was one of the few flights out that night and then they dumped five more inches on the airport and it canceled the rest of the flight. So you know it was smart to stay there. I needed to get here and be with Alex. So, yay, all right, freshen up that coffee, stay warm wherever you are.

Speaker 1: 12:35

And we are going to talk about what the heck to do with all those darn photos that you inherit or you may have of your own. We're not going to be talking about digital photos as much as we are going to be talking about paper photos, photos that have been printed out, that you have and that you are inheriting from your parents, and if you have not inherited them yet, you're going to. So let's talk about that. I got some cute and fun ideas and hopefully they help you with that avalanche of photos. All right, avalanche of photos. What does that mean? Well, I don't know about you, but when my mom and dad passed away and we went through their house, we ended up with rubber made totes and totes of photos.

Speaker 1: 13:30

The first thing I'm going to tell you is I'm going to give you complete there is no judgment here. Throw them away, if you just don't want to deal with them and don't feel guilty. You didn't take them. You didn't want them. Honestly, if there's nobody in your family wants to spend some time going through them, throw them away. There's nothing wrong with it. It's not taking anybody's soul, it's not doing any of those things that people think about. But if you are going to keep them, what the heck should you do with them?

Speaker 1: 14:02

Now, one of the things I was very clear about we were looking through them. If there's no writing on the back and you don't know who the people are, what the hell do you want with them? I'm going to give it to my kids. Now. It's generation after generation that don't know who these people are.

Speaker 1: 14:17

So my feeling is, if there are photos and you have no idea who they are, where they were taken and you have no information on them, first of all, those go throw them away. Throw them away. It's fine. But the first thing you want to do when you, when you're doing this, is gather all the old pictures in one place. So if you, if you, if family, have them around or anything, or somebody has them and they don't want to go through them anyway, whoever is the person that decides they want to go through them. Get them all together, take them out of Frames, take them out of shoeboxes and whatnot. Get them all together. And then you're going to want to call the images, and that's kind of what I was talking about. You could have hundreds of photos. I know my mom, I don't know about you, but back in the day, when they used to take them to the drug store. And then the drug store was like oh, we'll give you duplicates and triplicates, and then we'll give you a small one for this. And oh my gosh, there's just so much. And you're looking at it and your head is spinning. So call and call means going through and Do it quickly.

Speaker 1: 15:26

Look through, sort, have a way of sorting them. However, you want to do it by people, by time, by years. Figure out some simple, simple, don't make it hard and then go through, call, get rid of the ones you don't know. I don't know who this person is. Nothing was written on the back no year, no, nothing. Get rid of them, throw them away. Or one of the ideas that we're going to talk about is well, we'll save that, but get rid of them. Put them in a pile for Getting rid of. Organize them. Now. You want to like take that calling down to the next, create a few piles and organize your photos.

Speaker 1: 16:08

You can take a different approach to the task. You can sort the images by families or people or by dates, but pick one of those ways. Don't start doing it by families and then by dates and then by people. Choose how you want to do it. This is where you can perform additional sorting of the images. This is going to be like your second go-through. Perhaps you'll find portraits of some people or images of some events that you wouldn't want to feature in any of your artistic endeavors. Huck them, because from this you're gonna do. You're gonna do something and I'm gonna give you different ideas to do it.

Speaker 1: 16:46

Decide on what kind of copies you'll use. If you plan to go with hard copies of your images, you need to make sure that they're in tip-top condition. So if you're not going to scan in. Actually, if you're gonna even scan, you need to make sure you're picking the best pictures Constantly. If there's some really important ones to you, you can have those restored. You might be able to do it yourself by scanning them in and using a software.

Speaker 1: 17:13

If you decide on using digital copies, you obviously need to digitize your archive. You can either run the photos through a scanner or you can just shoot them all a new. Here's my feeling on that. Taking a photo of a photo is never as good as scanning it. Now, if you have an old-fashioned scanner or you think, oh great, I've got a printer scanner combo, you are gonna, after a half an hour of opening that lid, putting things on the scanner and shutting it, you're gonna, you're gonna really be over it.

Speaker 1: 17:43

So let's first talk about that Scanners. There are multitudes of scanners out there where you can just slide them in. So I went ahead and I looked at the top best scanners on January 2024. I'll put this on my website, wwwaging8forcissiespodcastcom. Epson fast photo is the number one. Why? Why they love it fast, scanning up to one photo per second. You slide them in and it can do up to 35 photos. So 35 seconds. Do, do, do, do, do, do. It can do them by batches and they can be all different sizes. It will also scan the back, so you will know what is written on the back. It includes software that has optical, optical character recognition. So if you want to recognize people and sort them that way, single-step technology to catch capture both the front and the back. So look at different Scanners there. There's gonna be different price points to this one, I believe, is around $500. But if you have hundreds of photos to do, think about your time and what it's worth. Excuse me, had a little tickle my throat there.

Speaker 1: 19:03

The second one is scan snap. This one can do all kinds of things. It can scan Receipts, it can scan Business cards. It's a great scanner, multi-purpose scanner. But it can also scan photos. I Do not like anything where I have to lift up a scanner, the the ones I'm talking to you about. These are put a batch in or one photo at a time. Boom, boom, boom going through. You don't want to waste time.

Speaker 1: 19:36

There's one here that's $199. It's called plus tech photo scanner. It is strictly designed to scan photos, but this one scans four by six. Let's see what other sizes it does. This is really a four by six scanner. So the thing I loved about the first one is that it scanned all different sizes. So look into photo scanners. I'll put this information on my website for you and you should be able to pick.

Speaker 1: 20:08

If you've got the old-fashioned kind and you don't have the money, you can do that, it's fine, but it will take you forever and it's enough to make you want to quit, I think. So looking into something, or Maybe going in on it with a friend that's going to do this you know 50, 50 on the scanner and share it I think that's a great idea or look for used ones. So what can we do once? We either use the hard copies or we scan these in I If you're not crafty. If you are crafty, I'm going to give you ideas. If you're creative and crafty, what can you do?

Speaker 1: 20:49

So the first thing was saving them for future generations, so they don't all need to be saved. So, since your family archive isn't just a bunch of old pieces of paper, but rather a people in the history of your whole lineage, it would be truly noble of you to save your old photos for younger generations, but do it in the easiest way so that they can look at them, and the easiest way is to scan them in and just have them in folders of years or family groups or however for others to look at. It might be tedious to digitize them yourself. If you are, if you have extra money to spend, you may want to send them off. There's many companies that send them off and will do it for you. But honestly, again, even that $500 digital scanner is worth it and you can scan all your other stuff. It's not just for photos, that $500 scanner. You can make your house a paperless house. Scan in all your important documents, the ones that you don't need to keep paper copies of.

Speaker 1: 21:55

Okay, the first thing make a collage with your old images, and you can do this digitally. I'm going to stop for a second. I've got to get this cough out. Hold on. Sitting in here with a heater running all day is just drying me out. So make a stunning collage with your old images. Just sit there and move them around and then put them down. There's no winning formula for this. You can do it any way you want, but a collage makes it really interesting to look at. And Google at one point and I don't know if they still do. Google had some great collage software.

Speaker 1: 22:39

I did it for the kids when they had to have things for school. I'm very lucky. Craig bought me the very first digital camera, I want to say a Kodak DC 400. So I've had digital photos since the kids were like four and two. So I don't have a lot of paper copies I do have of my parents. So another image is just to mix the most impressive and picturesque images into one stunning collage. Again, you can do this on paper or you can do it digitally. Their photos are still fun to look at, but you don't have to look at like one after another after another.

Speaker 1: 23:18

And if you do this, you can do it digitally, like I said, or crafty, all right. So if you're into craft a scrapbook, if you're one of those scrapbookers I was at one time, you can do that. You can collect all your stuff and get to work. Maybe you want to make just one scrapbook. Don't overwhelm yourself with everything. Maybe you want to make a scrapbook of your parents and your husband, your kids', grandparents Think about all the different ways you can do this. Or you want to craft one book for each of your kids.

Speaker 1: 23:55

That's not huge, you don't make it a big thing. You don't have to put all the little words. You can just put them in a scrapbook. You don't even need to do anything. There's no strict rules. So you can be as crafty or as non-crafty as you want, make a slideshow with your old and do that digitally. So once you've got them all in, you can put them in and, depending on what computer you have and what you're using, if you use iPhoto like I have, it'll create. You click on all the ones and you say create a slideshow, pick some great music. I did one for my parents years ago and there's an old song about the San Fernando Valley and that's where I grew up and I added that song to it. Look for songs that fit the time and you can create a slideshow so easily these days. So maybe you want to do that, maybe you don't want to do any of that. This is the one that I personally think is the best, and you can do it digitally and you can do it non-digitally.

Speaker 1: 25:00

Create a family tree with portraits. Go back in your family tree as far as you can with the pictures that you've inherited, and create a family tree and put in the portraits you want your kids to get to know their lineage, but do it in a fun and engaging way. This is a really great way. I didn't know any of my grandparents, fyi, but one. When I was born, three of my grandparents had already passed away. I only had one grandma. Honestly, no one ever filled me in with the other grandparents.

Speaker 1: 25:30

I've asked questions. My sister, cindy's real good at answering them. She knows a lot about the family. She's kind of the family historian. She is the family historian. She knows the most, I think, and she's filled me in. But honestly, when I was a kid, nobody told me anything about them. I still don't. Even I couldn't tell you their names. Larry, I think, is one of my grandparents, elmo maybe is, I don't know. I don't know and I would love to do this. So this after thank you, katie, for making me do this research this is what I'm going to do.

Speaker 1: 26:03

I am going to create a family tree as far back as the pictures I have, and share it, scan it digitally for my kids. I'll do it in an 8 by 12. I can scan that in with my handy dandy scanner that I have and send it to my kids and they'll have it. It's not a big deal. Okay, so no big deal. You can do it with glue and scissors and sharpies and paints and a piece of cardboard and a pinch of inspiration. Don't make it a big deal. If you don't want it to be a big deal, don't make it a big deal. That's the main thing I want to make clear to you with this and these photos, because one of the things the hardest thing, I think when your parents pass away, you've given them pictures of your kids throughout the years and now, all of a sudden, you have all those back and you already have them and that was hard for me to throw out, but I did it. I already had them. I didn't need them again.

Speaker 1: 26:59

Turn your family photos into photo books. This is great. There are a billion of websites that do this. If you have a Mac, if you look in your Mac photos, there is a place they'll make books right from there, and these are drop and go. Drop and go. You can do them with Walgreens, cvs. You can do them with Snapchat, or I mean Snap Fish, all kinds of them. Look at them. You can do them in a hard bound. You can do them in a soft bound. Hard bounds are very expensive. Don't do it. Do it in the soft bound and they're great.

Speaker 1: 27:32

If you've taken a vacation with some friends and you want to share with your friends your photos, you can make a photo book for each of them. They can cost anywhere from $10 to $25 or more, depending if you do hard bound. But these are drop and go. Can't get any more simple. If you've taken the time to scan those photos in, you have them organized. Super easy to make drop and go books. Maybe that's the way you want to do it. So do an album.

Speaker 1: 28:00

You can create jewelry with the images Little things like lockets or pendants and create one with a twist. Create a vintage image of your female relatives from yonder years and just create a locket for your grandkids of their great grandmother or something like that. Do something fun. There's all kinds of jewelry you can create. Make wall art with your photos. I'm not a big one for that. I'm very picky about what goes on my walls. I actually don't have a lot of photos in the house. Right when you walk in now in my house I have a little table and that has family photos from our family and that's what's there. If you're a big one for having photos around your home. There's all kinds of companies.

Speaker 1: 28:46

Now that you can send the photos, you peel and stick them to your walls. They don't hurt your walls. There's all kinds of things you can do. Turn it into some sort of wrapping paper, something like that that's an odd one, but fun. Turning it into home decor Now you can put on candle holders. You can put them on a blanket for someone. You can transfer images onto fabrics.

Speaker 1: 29:16

You may not want to do those with the old photos. You may want to do those with new photos. You may be sitting and just being overwhelmed with the 28,000 iFotos that you have and what to do. You can put those into folders, take some time on YouTube or actually go to the Mac Store. They have all kinds of free classes on photos. If you're a Mac user, I'm a Mac user, so I don't have a lot of help for people that aren't in that category. I know the Mac Store. If you look, they have free classes all day long.

Speaker 1: 29:49

Let's see what else can I give you here. Take gifts for your relatives out of these things and share them with them. Take your old photos to a thrift store if they're interesting, or donate them to historical societies. If you have pictures of old farms in an area, find out if the historical society for that area might be interested. This is something I've never thought of. If you've got pictures of Los Angeles back in the day, you know your parents are standing in front of the train terminal in downtown LA these kinds of things you might find the historical societies for cities or areas are interested in these pictures to create a full picture of the history of Los Angeles or Chicago or wherever you're from. So look into historical societies. That's why I was saying, if you don't want to throw them away, find out if a historical society might be interested in some of them.

Speaker 1: 30:54

It's a lot to be in charge of the family lineage. I know my brother-in-law, dave, on Craig side, has been doing a great job piecing the family history together. I kind of start and stop. I've gone on. What is that tree? I know the Mormon church has put together that tree of legend tree or I can't think of the name of it, but I started and stopped on that. My sister Cindy helped me with that, gave me some information, but you know I get started and then I stop.

Speaker 1: 31:24

It does get overwhelming. So if you can break it up into small pieces for yourself. Do that. Don't beat yourself up over a bunch of photographs. If you want nothing to do with them, then don't do anything with them. Throw them away. Get rid of them, give them to a historical society or put a note out into the family. Is there anybody interested in going through the photos? Don't saddle yourself with it if it's not your thing.

Speaker 1: 31:51

I think this happens to a lot of families. I think that we all get a little overwhelmed with our parents things, our family things. Remember they're just things. The people are. What important. Keep what makes you brings the most to your heart. Like I told you with my family, it was my dad's clocks, it was my mom's coffee cup and it was my parents' wind chimes out in their backyard. I'm getting a little choked up. When I moved I had to put the wind chimes. I gave them to Kyle and I certainly hope that she has them out on her balcony. When I listen to those wind chimes, I remember sitting on my parents' porch, back porch and organ and chatting with my parents.

Speaker 1: 32:37

So keep things that mean things to you. You don't have to keep everything. Think about your stuff. Do you care if anybody keeps it. I don't, of course. I've already gone through it all with my kids. So what's left is left and what they do with it, they do with it.

Speaker 1: 32:52

These are hard times, hard things to think about, but make it fun. Make it fun for you. Out of the things that I told you, pick something that speaks to you. It's just like working out. Don't do something you hate. If you hate the computer, don't digitize. Work with the copies that you have. Make it fun for yourself. But again, I'm not going to ever settle you with this. Throw them away if you want. We're not going to have time today for a senior moment.

Speaker 1: 33:21

I've talked a lot today. I hope you've gotten something out of this and, katie, I appreciate you bringing this and if anybody has any other ideas of subjects and, katie, I do hope this helped you with what you've got If you have subjects, please just text me if you're a friend and you know my phone number. If you don't email me at agingfastone at gmailcom, go on my website. Get information there. Wwwaging oh my gosh. Aging8forcissiespodcastcom. I hope you're staying warm wherever you are, and I hope when I record this podcast it's above zero. How's that? I'm looking out, the snow is slowing down. Yay, I'm hungry, but I can't walk for lunch and I don't have a car here. So, anyways, you know what I always say aging8forcissies.