Ok, I have to admit it, I’ve been procrastinating. In the last few months I’ve been talking about getting started with my Legacy Project, but alas, I just haven’t made the progress I intended.
 
My clients have been telling me for years about how hard it is to get started on big organizing projects and how easy it is to procrastinate, in fact, that’s actually why they usually end up hiring me. So now I officially get it, it’s very different when it’s your own stuff.
 
My intention with this project is to collect all my photos, videos, documents, and just about anything else that is a part of my life and my family’s history. I will then cull it down and begin to create different and interesting ways to both tell those stories and preserve them for future generations.
 
The task at hand is imposing and can feel overwhelming. So I realized that like any large project, it’s just a matter of taking small steps, one at a time, and then breaking it down to small manageable chunks. So that is what I’m going to do. And of course, that is what you can do as well.
 
Do you know where your photos are?
 
The first small step is to simply make a list of where everything is, or might be. You can’t start collecting things until you know where to look. Of course, there are some obvious places that come quickly to mind: Pictures folders, Documents folders, etc…, but then there are always some not so obvious places that important photos and videos might be hiding. For my own process I’m going to just start with digital assets and then come back to analog after I get this organized. I made a list below to get started, but will spend some time thinking about some places I may need to look.

• Computer folders

  • Pictures folder

  • Downloads folder

  • Movies

  • Documents

  • Desktop

• Apple Photos app and iCloud (or whatever other photo apps or platforms you use)

• External hard drives and thumb drives

• Photo hosting sites: Smugmug, Forever, Flickr, etc...

• Camera SD and CF cards

• Social media

• Photos shared with you

  • Email

  • Text

  • Apple Photos has a Shared with You section and Shared Albums

So for now I’m just going to make the list and then relax and enjoy the holidays. Like I said, small manageable chunks.
 
Next time I will take show you some methods for collecting this stuff and some tips to make it easier.