Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
010: Managing digital photos
784 Plays6 years ago
In this episode Mia and Dinah talk about the challenges of managing digital photos including storing them so you can find them when you need them, backing them up and doing something with them to make you happy.
Mia and Dinah share the current disorganised state of their digital photos. They’ve both failed to implement a consistent system to store, backup and use their photos.
Mia interviews Sally-Ann Lyons, a former travel agent and now clothing designer, who manages a large volume (over 30,000) of photos for both her work and from her travels. Her system includes:
- always travelling with her laptop (MacBook Air)
- downloading and editing her photos every day so as to not create a backlog of activity
- filing as she goes in iPhotos both chronologically and by continent and country
- only showing her photos on her laptop and not printing them out
- backing up her laptop automatically when she is at home
- backing up to a hard drive when she is travelling
- containment by creating a limit on how many photos she can store by limiting her hard drive storage capacity.
Mia and Dinah both discuss how they are going to tackle their digital photos backlog and develop new habits going forward.
LIFE ADMIN HIGHS OF THE WEEK
- Dinah talks about she has finally sorted out superannuation for herself and her husband.
- Mia talks about sorting out her children’s memorabilia and creating albums for class photos and achievement certificates.
LIFE ADMIN LOW OF THE WEEK
- Dinah talks about sending out the invitation to her son’s birthday party via multiple channels and how this complicated managing the RSVP process.
RESOURCES
Apps to make something with your digital photos:
SHARE
Please head to the Life Admin Life Hacks Facebook page to connect with listeners and share your thoughts, questions or suggestions.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Life Admin Life Hacks
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money and improve your household harmony. I'm Diana Roe Roberts, a commercial and finance executive. And I'm Mia Northrop, a user experience designer, researcher and writer.
Challenges of Managing Digital Photos
00:00:22
Speaker
This episode will be talking about digital photos. Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks.
00:00:31
Speaker
In previous episodes, we've talked about how we've managed to get our life admin into control. But this episode, we're talking about something that is still firmly a work in progress for both of us.
00:00:44
Speaker
So in my family, I think we started using digital cameras exclusively around the early 2000s. We had one of those heavy DSLR cameras and a little snap snap thing. And then in 2007, when the iPhone came out, I got one straight away. And since then, there has been a complete explosion of photos.
00:01:08
Speaker
The convenience of having a really quality camera on you all the time has just meant that I'm drowning in photos now. I have over 10,000 photos on my Mac. I have only made three albums since I'm gone digital. I've made three. Yeah. Mm hmm. I know. And one of them you gave to me.
00:01:34
Speaker
Yeah. I've made ad hoc forays into the Photos app to sign photos to events with dates, but mostly it's a disorganised mess of crappy shots, duplicates, three shots of the same thing with slightly different angles, and I haven't backed it up since the start of the year. That sounds quite out of control, man. What's happening with your situation?
00:02:01
Speaker
I guess we had a slightly similar journey, but we bought our first digital camera when we moved overseas in the early 2000s. We actually left Australia with that camera and two backpacks and we thought how convenient it was going to be
00:02:18
Speaker
because we thought we were going to be travelling for about two years. We thought, wow, this digital camera is going to be great. We won't have to print out any film, you know, while we're sort of footloose and fancy free backpackers. And little did I know that that thought would create this sort of snowballing effect nightmare that I'm in today, because in fact, we didn't return to Australia for more than 10 years.
00:02:42
Speaker
And so we came back after having traveled to more than 20 countries. We had two children and we took literally thousands of photos, both with that original digital camera, but then also, you know, iPhones as they came along. And so none of those got printed for, you know, 10 years because we always thought that next year we'd return to Australia and we would print them when we got home.
00:03:12
Speaker
But I think my saving grace is that my filing has always been pretty good probably until recent years. When we had the camera, I was really good at downloading and saving by year and by month. So I've definitely got them in the right chronology.
00:03:30
Speaker
And I even backed them up to an external hard drive. But I think more recently, because I've taken less and less photos with the camera and more and more with the phone, that need to constantly download and clear the memory card has meant that the filing in the more recent years has kind of really stressed my system, I suppose.
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's very interesting that you have this device that is supposed to make things more convenient, but it just creates a problem in another area of your life. Another sort of downstream impact on taking photos is now that we just have too much and we don't know what to do with them. So we've
Effective Storage and Backup Strategies
00:04:12
Speaker
explored three aspects to managing digital photos.
00:04:16
Speaker
This includes, first off, storing them where you can find them. You need to get the photos off your various devices, whether it's multiple DSLR cameras or smartphones or other cameras, and putting it into a system so that you can find it when you need it. You need to be able to have a system that doesn't waste your time in terms of being able to use it quickly, getting in there, finding photos by name or date or what's useful to you.
00:04:44
Speaker
and having a storage system that doesn't lock you into proprietary formats. So you don't want to be using some cloud storage or some photo app tool that makes you save your photos in a specific format. So that's difficult to get them out of that format.
00:05:03
Speaker
The second aspect to managing your digital photos is backing them up, making sure you don't lose your files. So at the very least, your system should preserve the files you wish to keep for future use. And you need to be confident that you will always be able to get to the files when you need them.
00:05:22
Speaker
So you might save them on an external hard drive, or you could back them up to the cloud using iCloud, Google Photos, Flickr, Dropbox, MS OneDrive, something like that. I used to use Flickr. I still have an account, I guess. I haven't been there for years. And every now and then, we do backup our stuff on an external hard drive for two years.
00:05:47
Speaker
I've got a very dodgy system at the minute. So I think that I've got everything. Actually, I think I've got a lot of the historical stuff is on an external hard drive, but I couldn't tell you the last time I backed it up. So that means but I think the more recent photos that are on my iPhone are backed up to iCloud. So the problem is I don't have one single backup, which is related to the storage problem.
00:06:18
Speaker
The third aspect of managing digital photos is being able to do something with them to make you happy.
00:06:25
Speaker
So you need to be able to edit or enhance the images and you also want to be able to share them in the way you choose. So for some people that's being able to produce photo books, for others it's just being able to print out regular photos or to put them up on the wall. And I think that you need to make sure that it's the thing that makes you happy, not what you think you should do with them. And I think that's something that we'll come to later in this episode.
00:06:51
Speaker
Sure. And there's so many little apps and bits of software that make picture books and magnets and other memorabilia. I've asked friends who love things like Social Print Studio or Pocket Prints or Picture Posty to make little flip books, photo albums of different sizes, little fridge magnets and things like that that you can give as gifts. So Listener Suggestions really welcome here. If you have some photo apps that you use that you think are really easy to use,
00:07:20
Speaker
or just have a great variety of products, let us know on the Facebook page. And I think if you've got all of those three aspects sorted, then you no longer have what I currently have called digital photo anxiety.
00:07:34
Speaker
That's
Expert Insights with Sally-Ann Lyons
00:07:35
Speaker
a nice segue to our interview with Sally-Ann Lyons, who has her digital photo system nailed. She's going to share what works for her. So today we're talking to Sally-Ann Lyons, who in a previous life was a travel agent and has still retained her love of travel and therefore a love of taking a lot of photos. So welcome to the show, Sally, and thanks for sharing your experience with our listeners. Thanks, Mia, and thanks for inviting me.
00:08:02
Speaker
So Sally, what kinds of moments or events do you usually photograph? Well, as you said, travel has been my passion. So travel are the dominant photos in my album, but I also take a fair degree of business photos, which are basically business product. So I design clothing and so amateur photo shoots from my home or I get professionals in and they all need to be stored and really carefully filed.
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah. So that's photos of your clients wearing certain outfits or just the design? Both. It really photographs in any aspect for my business, but predominantly the photos are the product, which I would put on a dummy and I would set up with a white screen in the background and use a photo cutter editing process, or as we said, photos that come in from my graphic designer and photographer.
00:08:54
Speaker
Okay. So you do in your personal life, you've got all that travel related photography, and then in the business life, you've got all your products and perhaps clients as well. So you are having to organize a hell of a lot of digital photos. A lot? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you even know compared to what other people, you know, I don't know what's a lot. Well, this is a good question. It's like asking people, how many emails do you have in the inbox? And they're like, I have 3000. It's like, Oh my God. And some people think that's kind of normal.
00:09:24
Speaker
Do you know how many photos you have? I do. I do. I always know. I use a Mac and a Mac ear and I say that specifically because I only have 500 gigabyte storage and my photos take half of that and they can only take half of it. So at any given stage, I have around 33,000 photos and that's around 200. Oh, see, I don't think that's me.
00:09:47
Speaker
Oh, I had to go and check. 33,000. Oh, 33,000. 33,000. Oh, you love it? 33,033. What's that? Nice round number. The aim is to get it under 30,000. So it's a really good motivator to cull and correctly organize the photos because I don't keep them on a hard drive. And there's good reason for that, even though it's the obvious thing to do. But there is really good reason why I do not use an external hard drive.
00:10:15
Speaker
All right, so you've got photos from all these different sources that you have to bring together. Yes, yes. Oh, yeah. Maybe we should start with the travel side of things. Talk us through the process you follow when you're on holiday and then you're going to edit and organize and make them easy to enjoy somehow. OK, so most importantly, every night I edit my photos. So it's just a thing I do early in the morning. So I travel with my laptop.
00:10:44
Speaker
And of course, as I said, it's an ear, so it's easy to travel with. That's important. So I always download all photos from all sources pretty well much every night. Try to edit them every night, but maybe I'm editing them on a bus or on a ferry or whenever. But on that journey, I return home with all of that edited and filed, because I just know I'm not going to touch them after that.
00:11:09
Speaker
And where are you editing? Are you just deleting the crappy ones? Are you cropping and putting filters on? Both. So editing, making a quick cull. And I've got, at the beginning, it was really hard because you'd say, oh, should I keep it? Should I not keep it? And there'd be two good shots. And what I learned to do is use my instinct and close my eyes, look at it again and say, Sal, just pick one. Just pick one.
00:11:34
Speaker
I'm not going to die from, you know, it's just one of those things. Make it easy on yourself. And so, yes, I cull very quickly. And there's a lot of culling. And the other thing is, yes, I edit, but I never put filters on. So I keep my editing to a minimum. And how are you organizing them within the Photos app?
00:11:52
Speaker
very easily. I use iPhoto and I set up folders and albums. This is critical. Always been a good filer. I'm a bit obsessive about taking control of any organization, organizational elements. So I use chronological, alphabetical. So for instance, travel, I have a main travel folder and then of course it's categorized down into continents.
00:12:17
Speaker
countries. Additionally, I've started to set up chronological because I'm quite now keeping in mind the the laptop won't duplicate so it's not using more space to create multiple files.
00:12:37
Speaker
So, I might be thinking, I wonder what I did in 19, you know, whatever, or, you know, 2017. So, I can easily get to both aspects of my photos. And it's just important to me. And it's what drives the reason why I file. Yeah. All right. So, you've got two category systems. You can browse by continent and country, or you can browse by year. Yes. That's what you're saying. Fantastic. Yeah. How do you display and enjoy the photos?
00:13:07
Speaker
only on my laptop or the television. In fact, it was the reverse. I took all my hard copies, which were something like 30 albums or more, and scanned every photo about a decade ago because I wanted them all digitised and it's been amazing. I'm so glad I did it.
00:13:24
Speaker
night after night I just in the early days scan them all so I have my whole life family family you know grandparents and old photos everything's in the files everything's in my files and only on my laptop not on an external hard drive don't print them
00:13:40
Speaker
unless that's a business, just seldom. And do you have any concerns about the fact that if something happens to that laptop... Absolutely. Yes, I do. And I've set up for that. So first of all, things happen in life, but more importantly, I have back up to my airport every 15 minutes of my house.
00:14:00
Speaker
Now, when I travel, it's a really interesting thing because that is quite different. And I have a habit of deleting the photos off my camera. And I'll give you a good example of this when I went to the Oscars when this is a really obviously an important event. And I was doing what I just said, editing every night, colouring, setting them up in my in my laptop. Now, I got waylaid in Salt Lake City and I took a rest and
00:14:27
Speaker
When I returned home, that camera was not with me, whether it got stolen or I dropped it or whatever. And potentially, I would have had none of those photos for such an important event that would have been, you know, pretty heartbreaking. And I backed all of those up. So there's one example, but it can work in the reverse because that laptop could be stolen.
00:14:47
Speaker
And I'm not a cloud fan, so I tend to keep the photos. I now travel with an external hard drive as a backup. So I know it's, you know what, it sounds like a lot of work. It is not. I've got quick header and also it means so much that there's no pain in it, really. And so when you want to share the photos with other people, you just get out the laptop and sit there and show them that way.
00:15:08
Speaker
Mia, I love it. Now, I don't call people, but I'll give you a really good example of what happened in the pool last year. I was in Back to Poor. I had the good fortune of having a young chap guide me around the area, and he took me to his grandma's house. Now, I was in Back to Poor in 1988. I had my laptop and my backpack, and she was spinning and doing things that I love to see. And we got chatting, and I remembered those photos back in 1988. I knew I had instant access to them. I was in that file within two minutes.
00:15:37
Speaker
There were photos of her friends in Back to Poor. I could take her back to 1980. And she was just ecstatic. The whole family came to view them. And I was able to leave a USB of those photos that she could treasure. Now, who would know in 1988 that in 2018, I was being able to, you know, have such pleasure and give so much pleasure. So, yes, I like to open them when someone mentions something, particularly if it aids them. If someone says, oh, I was in London, you know, and I go, oh, wow, let's share the photos.
00:16:09
Speaker
So what three things would you suggest to listeners who don't know where to begin to get their digital photos under control? Yeah. Well, for me, what I'd say is first thing I'd ask is why? Decide whether it's actually important to you in the first place. Because if it doesn't have a level of importance, then you won't really get on top of the task. So it needs to be driven by desire in my opinion.
00:16:31
Speaker
And the second one is to keep it simple. Look, I've bought many an app to think it's going to make light work of editing, yada, yada, yada. But I found that actually there's nothing wrong with what I've got on my laptop. It's there in front of me. So keep it simple. I know it's easier said than done, but use your existing tools. And both PC and Apple support it. It just is starting somewhere. So create your folders.
00:17:00
Speaker
use your chronological or alphabetical and think about words that come to mind. So, you know, it sounds exhaustive to file, but think if you're going to look for family photos, then the photo is called family. And if it's all about your grandchildren, we'll call it grandchildren. File them in there.
00:17:16
Speaker
The other thing is get to it straight away. So when you download those photos onto your laptop, I've really got into the habit of flicking those straight to the folder. And if there's no folder, open it instantly. It's two seconds. And that way you're not having to look through imports and think, oh my Lord, 33,000 imports, where do I start?
00:17:36
Speaker
Yeah, discipline about doing it in a timely way and creating the habit of just dealing with it at the time so it doesn't get into the backlog. It's the way
Impact of Over-Photography
00:17:45
Speaker
in anything, isn't it? And you will. And coming back to number one desire, you will if you want it. And it's like anything, it's a muscle. I'm better at it today than I was three years ago.
00:17:56
Speaker
Do you think people take too many photos? Do you ever find yourself thinking, you know what, I'm not going to actually take this shot because I've got this from three different angles and I don't need more photos? Because I think that now that people have their camera phones, they feel compelled to take photos all the time of everything. And I find myself now just going, you know, I don't need a photo of a blow by blow account of
00:18:20
Speaker
especially with the kids of every single thing that happens in their lives because I think I'm thinking I don't have time to organize the photos. No one's ever going to look at them because I won't be putting them in an album or organizing them. So this is just a waste of sort of thinking and
00:18:36
Speaker
I agree. I think it's sort of, you know, it's at the front of everything we're doing. What helps me control the amount of photos I take certainly is that you're right, the effort I have to put in, but the half storage space. Now, I think the problem is, oh, I've got a gigabyte. I've got X mount. I never seem to fill up a file. No, but you've, but there's a mental exhaustion to that as well. So yeah, I agree. I think start with that. I certainly consider it when I'm traveling, but
00:19:05
Speaker
Funny enough, travel, you don't want to lose that moment. I love a journalistic moment. These days, a lot of our experiences, we have these infinity experiences where we don't run out of things. As you said, you've got this boundary where you've got a certain gigabyte limit that you can go to on your PC.
00:19:25
Speaker
In the old days, when you had those old cameras, you had 24 shots or 36 precious shots on a roll of film. So you really did think about every photo. Now we have unlimited space on these phones, unlimited photos, unlimited storage. So you kind of just go nuts, but then you can't actually
00:19:41
Speaker
And you deal with it on a such a mental, we don't even realise how much that sprinkles you because it is a photo, it's an imprint, it's an imprint, it's another thing and we do, I agree. I think, 500 and fit 12, I keep looking for, I want the year back to give me more but actually at the end of the day, all I'd have is more rubbish. I'm sure I liken it to a larger wardrobe. I have a small wardrobe and those clothes have to fit, end of story and it keeps my containment. I think containment is a really good point.
00:20:11
Speaker
Yeah. Great. Sally, thank you so much for your perspective on this. I'm sure these tips and your ideas will help a lot. Thanks for your time. Thanks so much, Mia. So, Donna, I learnt so much through having a chat with Sally. I've thought about photos in a different way. What struck you most about Sally's approach?
00:20:32
Speaker
I guess one of the things that I really like about it is previously I really thought I had to print out the photos in some shape or form. So I really had to do my photo book or print the photos. But I really like Sally's approach that as long as you've got your filing sorted and you can find the photos you want when you need them,
00:20:54
Speaker
you don't need to worry about having a whole lot printed out. And I think that that can potentially take some of the agony out of my backlog because actually my filings not too bad. What about you, man? I like to point about what's driving the reason why you file. You know, is it to make albums of events of the past year or to find a special shot to print or you want to just browse on the computer? And depending on why, why you're filing and why you're storing, you might not need
00:21:23
Speaker
a really detailed organizational hierarchy. So I think for me, my issue is not so much knowing how to organize them. What's daunting for me is just the sheer volume of photos and the tedium of going through them and working out how I'm going to choose which ones I want to keep. So Diana, what's your plan? What are you going to do next?
00:21:42
Speaker
So I do think I'm going to have a slightly different approach for the photos I'm going to take from now on versus sort of dealing with the backlog, the years and years of photos I've got saved on computers and hard drives and things.
00:21:57
Speaker
So I guess for the historical photos I really just want to sort out the filing and make sure I'm really confident that I know where everything is and through that process also go through and I guess identify some really important special photos that I'm going to then frame and put on my wall rather than worry too much about photo books.
00:22:18
Speaker
And then going forward, I'm going to really think about how I file photos and what I'm going to do with them in real time rather than waiting for years. I sort of acknowledge now I just don't have time in my life to attempt photo books for the last 15 years of photos. And I might leave it on my someday list, but I know I'm not going to do it now. I'm just going to make sure that my filing system is robust going forward.
00:22:46
Speaker
And what about you, Mia? What's your plan of action? For me, I've got to have a bit of a mindset adjustment first. I need to be a bit more discerning and just take fewer photos.
00:22:59
Speaker
You know, I don't aim to capture life comprehensively unless you're a person who really enjoys and has time to organize photos. I think you have to let go and acknowledge that your children are going to be fine if there's not photographic evidence of every cool thing that ever happens to them. And I really need to establish a new habit. I need some discipline around going through the backlog on a regular basis. And then as I'm taking photos, creating albums at the end of an event or a
00:23:29
Speaker
some special moment, actually processing the photos as you go, as Sally suggested. So if you're someone who takes photos for social media only, just delete it afterwards. And I sometimes forget to do that and I end up with all these random photos of things that I just flipped onto Facebook for a laugh.
00:23:48
Speaker
I still want to organize, but now that I know that I only really want to make kids albums for each year just so they can capture some birthday photos and a couple of special things that might have happened to them. And I am going to attempt to make a sort of general photo album for each year to capture holidays and Christmas and other memorable moments.
00:24:09
Speaker
And I also want to print some family photos and have them on the wall. We actually don't have one photo of the four of us as a family anywhere in the house. And I know we've taken a couple, but they're actually good. We're all looking at the camera and smiling at the same time, but we don't actually have one on the wall. So knowing that I'm just, for my organizational system, I'm just going to do it by year and then maybe like the special occasions in that year, the birthdays, the Christmas, a holiday,
00:24:38
Speaker
and then leave it at that. Everything else can be just a free for all. So why do you think this is worth tackling? Why is this a problem worth solving? I have been thinking about this and actually doing a little bit of reading about it, too, because it's been one of those things that's weighed on my mind, one of those lurking challenges for years now. It's a blocker. It's a blocker. So I think, you know, photos remind us of, you know, happy
00:25:04
Speaker
people or people we love places and things we've done that we we love and so they actually looking back at them is actually a really happy joyful experience and it's sad that at the moment looking at them. Doesn't give me that joy sometimes because there's so much mess amongst it.
00:25:23
Speaker
I also think that photos help us just remember the past. One of the best ways to make yourself happy in the present is to recall happy times from the past. Photos are that great memory prompt. We tend to take photos of happy occasions. They really weigh our memories to the good rather than to the
00:25:43
Speaker
you know the less happy things that might have happened to us overtime so i really think it's worth investing that energy and developing a process or system that means you don't create a backlog that you sort your digital photos as you go so they are more of a sense of joy than they are of dread. What about for you ma'am.
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Photos help you savor experiences and prolong that happiness that's associated with them. I think it helps, as you said, kind of fight that negativity bias that you have about how your day or your year might have gone when you can look back at photos and actually, there was so many moments of fun or hilarity or absurdity or interest. And I think they, you know, seeing those photos, especially family and friends, it helps kids and adults have that sense of belonging
00:26:34
Speaker
belonging and identity with your family and your friends, it's sort of reinforced by those occasions and those times you spend together. And I have to say for me, photo albums become very precious keepsakes. You know, you always hear that cliche of if people had to
00:26:50
Speaker
right out of their burning house, what would they grab? And people always say the photo albums, the photo albums, because it does reinforce identity and belonging and the happy experiences of the past. So this is definitely something worth getting on top of. The idea of losing all my photos suddenly, of having them all in my MacBook and then coming happening to this or the backup or whatever and losing them all, I would be so regretful that I never took the time
00:27:18
Speaker
to make the albums or print things out or do something, you just sort of take it for granted. So it's something that I really want to prioritize. And I must admit, Mia, another reason is I sadly think, you know, my memory's going. And so, you know, sometimes when I've been looking back at photos, I can't actually quite remember that that photo ever being taken. Oh, yeah. And I think, you know, 10 years ago, I definitely didn't have that problem. But now when I look at them, I'm like, oh,
00:27:47
Speaker
I can't actually remember that moment. I just found a photo of me dressed as a blues brother with another girl that I went to uni with. I have no memory of whose party that was, how I decided to go as a blues brother. That is an obvious costume choice for me. Yeah, I have no idea what the context is there.
00:28:13
Speaker
So, Mia, when do you think you're going to start tackling your digital photo problem?
Organizing Photos and Memorabilia
00:28:20
Speaker
This is something that definitely needs to be tackled systematically. And I ideally like to pair it with another activity because it's boring. It's just let's face it, it's boring. It seems to make sense to pair it with something like watching TV where you can sort of half watch while you're doing this, but I don't actually watch a lot of television.
00:28:42
Speaker
I did attempt to do this at our holiday house where, as I mentioned in a previous episode, I, well, there's no wifi night. You might play board games or read a book or you can watch free to air TV. And I didn't actually get the laptop out and work on the photos. So I'm thinking maybe it's going to be a monthly thing where I take myself out of the house with the laptop and I go to a local cafe and I get like,
00:29:08
Speaker
order myself hot chocolate or have some dessert or something. So I have this little reward and I'm stuck there and all I can do is do my phytos. Or the idea occurred to me would start a monthly meetup with some friends or some neighbors and we all go to somewhere and do it together because I'm sure if I was sitting around having a glass of wine chatting to people last doing it, it would be
00:29:32
Speaker
Really fun. I don't know that just seems kind of nerdy and absurd I don't know other people would be into that but that's I need accountability and I've got my deadlines My kids don't care that there's no photo albums because they don't miss what they've never had And I know one's keeping me accountable for this. I feel like I need some kind of extra carrot or push. What are you gonna do? yeah, I am a bit worried too about the lack of accountability, but I
00:30:01
Speaker
thinking now that I've got into this really good habit of having this hour of power on a Sunday evening, and I've actually nailed most of the important things in my to-do list, maybe I'm going to use my hour of power on a Sunday evening to start sorting out the photos. But I did already make some progress in printing out some and putting them on my wall using a great app called Keepsake. And so effortlessly I've
00:30:29
Speaker
had 10 photos printed, framed and sent to me. Now I just have to organize the handyman to hang them on the wall. So I'm 90 percent of the way done on at least that first bit. OK, well, stay tuned, listeners. We're on a journey here and we want to hear what your
00:30:46
Speaker
approach is going to be to getting your digital photos under control. And if anybody wants to come and hang out in a bar with me and do digital photos together, leave a note on Facebook and I will be there. I'm getting desperate. All right, Diana, tell us about your life admin high of the week.
00:31:01
Speaker
Well, as I just mentioned, I have been really sort of working through the important things on my to-do list and I finally sorted out both my superannuation and my husband's superannuation. I went through the process of reviewing and deciding what I wanted to do, checking all the insurances and fees, decided how I was going to roll it over,
00:31:22
Speaker
filled out multitudes of paperwork, and now it's all complete, it's all filed in my Google Drive, and I feel so much more confident that I know what we've got, and that I've made the best decision, and I can just forget about superannuation for several years now, so it feels pretty good. So when you say you have your super sorted, did you want to change plans and you think you're not getting the best rates, or what prompted this decision?
00:31:50
Speaker
I think it's because I changed jobs and so I just had that time when I had to re-choose a new superannuation fund and it occurred to me that perhaps the superannuation fund I had been with, it was quite expensive, the fees, and I also was concerned about the insurance coverage.
00:32:11
Speaker
In our 2019 season, we want to spend a whole episode on reviewing various financial products, including your superannuation, so that people can have the criteria that they need to be addressing and some tools to make that switching easier. And Mia, did you have a life admin high of the week? I did. I went through
00:32:33
Speaker
the kids' memorabilia boxes, which were two boxes at the top of their wardrobes that were out of control, heaving, spewing with stuff. I would literally open up the cupboard, throw the birthday card or the dance award or the medal from Taekwondo into the top cupboard, hope it would land in the box and close the cupboard. And I've been doing that for
00:32:58
Speaker
seven years. So it was time to get those boxes down and go through them and work out what was actually in there. There was lots of scribbles and scrolls, art, things that kept that may have been meaningful had but lost their significance of the time. And in there was also their class photos from kinder and school and various achievement certificates. So I made two albums for one for each kid that has their class photos starting from daycare and kinder and school.
00:33:28
Speaker
along with their certificates. So they've got a nice album each. Created another box of heirloom toys and books that might be nice to pass down. So some really nice wooden toys and those books that we must have read a gazillion times that become really special. I've created a box to keep that kind of stuff. So I feel good that the cupboard's all tidy now. I know exactly where I need to put the special things from their lives, their keepsakes that they want to hang on to and
00:33:58
Speaker
It just feels like there's less clutter now in that cupboard. It must feel great. Yeah. So did you have a life admin lawyer of the week?
00:34:08
Speaker
I did actually I had was organizing my son's birthday party and I sent out the invitation via email to some parents and then by text to some parents because some I didn't have email addresses and some I had phone numbers and then a couple more I didn't have either. And so I had to give paper invitations.
00:34:33
Speaker
to those kids, you know, via my, my son. And then this then creates complexity from managing RSVPs because then you've got channel confusion because you don't know and you've forgotten who you sent an email to versus a text versus a paper. And you, it makes the process of managing those RSVPs so much more complicated than it needed to be. So I think I really didn't handle that very well.
00:35:02
Speaker
Okay note to self for next time. So interesting exploration of digital photos.
Tips to Enjoy Your Photo Collection
00:35:09
Speaker
Don't forget to try some of the life hacks at home and let us know how it goes.
00:35:14
Speaker
Make sure you're storing your photos where you can find them with some kind of organizational system that makes sense for how you want to use the photos eventually. Don't forget to back them up, use an external hard drive, or find some cloud solution that works for you. And then do something with them that makes you happy. Find a way to print them into albums, memorabilia, or work out a way to share the photos digitally. That's going to give you a sense that you're making the most of them.
00:35:43
Speaker
If you'd like to join us on our Life Admin journey, please head to our Facebook page, Life Admin Life Hacks, to follow us and share your thoughts on what we're doing. And feel free to post any comments or certainly post suggestions that we might be able to use. We hope to see you there. Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks.com. If you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend or review us in your podcasting app.