What do you have that really has meaning and shows the quality of your business or great moments in personal or family life? Last weekend, my nephew got married to a really great girl. We are thrilled to have her in our family. Their story of how they met, how they romanced each other and how the proposal went was sooo cute and it was all illustrated in a scrapbook next to the sign in book at the reception. Everyone got a kick out of looking through it. What a priceless piece of family history that was JUST created! I would be heart sick to know that because of moving 13 times like newlyweds do or because of some other casual forgetfulness that this scrapbook of memories was to be lost… and these aren’t even MY kids. My sister gets the message though. I wrote her with this suggestion.
“Dear Beth,
When you have such an important piece of family history that you would regret loosing it, make a copy and keep the copy in a separate location than where the first copy is kept… I noticed a wonderful scrapbook on the table by the sign up book of Donny and Donna. Supposing that this young couple will, like all the rest of us, loose wonderful things like this as they move around so much in their beginning years, someone should take the scrapbook to a copy shop that has a laser writer (don’t scan and print it at home which is NOT archival) and have them photocopy onto acid-free paper at least one copy. Once copied, put the copied pages into plastic page protectors and place in a favorite binder.”
Actually, I add, if you are making one copy why not two? Send one to Illinois besides the original and a copy in California. Earthquakes, house fires, hurricanes, floods can happen and do. My Mom threw out boxes of wet irreplaceable photos and letters because they got wet when a water heater broke. What a disaster! I could have saved them… I even wrote a book about it!
For a copy of “How To Save Your Stuff From A Disaster” click, now, onhttp://saveyourstufffromadisaster.com/productssupplies/
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it. I have so much important family info in my scrapbooks, photo albums etc. Thanks.
Congrats on the wedding and thanks for the tips. These are great ideas. Thanks also for making the RSS feeds available and the Free Tips. Good stuff!
What great info. Thanks. We’ve been having floods in our area (Nashville) and I’ve been looking for help. I’ll check out the book.
It’s posts like this that keep me coming back and checking this site regularly, thanks for the info!
I told my sister about this one and enjoyed sharing.
I really enjoy this blog and thanks for the informative posts. I come here looking for scrapbook hints and stories and always find much more that interests me.
In China, this good info not available otherwise. Keep up the excellent work. I use scrapbook often.
I have been looking around http://www.saveyourstuff.com at your different posts and am impressed by the great content here. I work the nightshift at my job and it is boring. I have been coming to your blog for the past couple nights and reading. I look ahead to reading more.
This is one of the best, most interesting blogs I’ve seen! All of your info is so applicable to my family history interests and work. I’ve shared a bunch of your tips, like this post, with my genealogical group and I always hear an Ah Ha! Thanks for posting this informative and the useful articles.
Great tip about making a copy of scrapbooks and storing the copies in a different location than the original. This is true for anything you want to protect, such as digital scrapbooks and photos. Although, creating copies of a digital scrapbook is a lot easier, since they are already in digital format.
.-= Stefanie@The Scrapbook Album´s last blog ..Scrapbook Ideas for Creating the Perfect Wedding Album =-.
Thanks Stefanie for your comment. Making copies of scrapbooks and photos for a backup is VERY important for emergency preparedness and disaster planning. I can’t stress enough how important this can be for the emotional well being of a family. But one of the points of emphasis on this website is the preservation and saving of the original important photos, especially vintage ancestral photos. A good quality, high resolution copy of those valuable photos will be wonderful to have if the original is lost in a disaster (broken water heater in the garage?) but the copy WON’T take the place of it.
Scott, what a truly brilliant idea for a blog! You’ve certainly made me thing about getting my own stuff safely protected 😉
The title reminded me of something. Our friend has a fireproof safe containing all their important documents. It in fact survived a house fire, but it turn out it wasn’t water proof. All the documents got destroyed by the water used to put out the fire. So moral of the story is put the important stuff in a ziploc bag before putting them in the fire safe.
Hey Sawyer,
Great idea! And zip lock bags are made out of “archival” plastic and are safe for storing documents. Good suggestion.
Hi,
First of all congrats. You have such a great family with amazing memories. As far as backing up is concerned , you can save a scanned copy of the scrapbook on websites that allow document storage. In this way you also could access it from anywhere of the world. In case of flood or any hazard, even if you lost the original, you could go again on your computer and could see your things again.
Michelle,
Good comments which I continually tell people also. Put the focus on this website is all about saving the original, historical, emotionally valuable items.
Great blog post. It’s useful information.
Took me time to read all of the feedback (good comments). I actually loved the article. It proved to be very helpful as I was wondering about some scrapbook “archival” issues and what might be hype and what might be the real thing. You never read any good objective info on this subject. Thanks… I was also entertained! It sounds like you enjoyed this wedding and writing this article.
Very useful information about keeping memories and making a copy of scrapbook and keeping it in a different location than the original. All this stuff is valuable especially for stuff I consider priceless. Keep posting like this.. I really like it!
This is great advice on your blog page. Having just been through a cyclone and severe flooding in Queensland Australia, I hadn’t actually thought of photocopying the most precious scrapbooking memories and keeping them separately, although I had them wrapped in plastic bags and in plastic watertight containers? hopefully if the worst happened. Fortunately this time it didn’t. Thanks for sharing your timely advice.
Great ideas, thank you for posting…
Excellent advice – through 2 mishaps I have twice lost my entire collection of photographs and video of when my kids were young – heartbreaking
That scrap book idea is amazing, It is wonderful that romance is still in vogue with the kids of these days. And you’re right it would be a shame to lose it (even if their was a copy. But at least having an archival copy, (like you said not just one made with the home scanner) is a fantastic way to preserve such memories.
Something I had done recently was when getting some photographs archived I also had them digitalized and their are many services online (or in the form or a harddrive or e-mail) in which you can store a digital copy.
Thanks for the good comments Margaret. Readers, if you click on Margaret’s name, it’ll link you to her scrapbook, photo album website and you can see some fun ideas.
Your post has a beautiful thought. It made me smile as I think about the similar memories in my family. Thanks for sharing.
Good tip, but anything REALLY important I just keep in my safety deposit box. A scrapbook is one of those “once in a lifetime” items that deserves a secure home.
This post contained excellent advice regarding the preservation of memories, especially the idea of copying documents. Few people take seriously the value of making and filing copies of important documents so they are retrievable later, but copying scrapbook pages makes a lot of sense! Thanks for posting this.
Thanks for your comment Jay.
I love this post and the ideas about a cheap and quick archival scrapbook. Thanks.
great article
I hadn’t actually thought of photocopying the most precious scrapbooking memories and keeping them separately, although I had them wrapped in plastic bags and in plastic watertight containers? hopefully the worst hasn’t happend.