Movies
One of our favorite projects has been the copying of our somewhat extensive collection of DVDs to our much-appreciated portable hard drive. I researched the software and found a decent one, got it loaded onto Chelsea’s computer, and she’s been happily copying several movies a day for months.
We ran into a couple of stubborn ones, unfortunately our favorite movies, so yesterday Chelsea bought and downloaded a better software. We are waiting for their “chat” service to open (only nine p.m. to three a.m. our time!) before she can proceed, but we are very optimistic that our long project will be done in a matter of a few days.
Memories boxes
Most of us have a sentimental streak. We’ll save our first concert tickets, postcards from special places, napkins from a restaurant, matchbooks, little trinkets we’ve collected, love letters. As we get older we save our kids’ artwork, letters from friends and family, “breaking up” letters, old address books. Birthday cards, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards, old sports memorabilia – they all pile up over time.
Since I’ve moved so much, I tend to pick a box and fill it with all those little odds and ends. That’s a great idea until the boxes start multiplying. Then it’s time to sort and toss, time that never seems to come.
Over the last five years I’ve sorted my boxes bit by bit, wearing out soon with each attempt because of the emotional drain. Who wants to read sad or aggressive letters from your now-ex lover/spouse? Who wants to make the decision on what pieces of your kids’ artwork to throw out? They’re all wonderful. Who wants to get teary over a relationship gone wrong? Can you really toss your kid’s hospital bracelet from his birth? Those Bruce Springsteen concert tickets are yellowed with age, but oh, remember how great that night was!
Flush with success from the rest of our downsizing, eager to ditch every possible box, and still on the hunt for everything I could find for the book-writing projects, I tackled the sorting of my memories boxes one fine morning, thinking to rip through them in a few hours.
It took nineteen hours over three days to sort the three boxes (size “medium”), and several weeks to relax out of the emotional roller-coaster. The contents of the boxes covered two continents, three children, over fifty years, and at least three lifetimes of adventures and Mother’s Day cards.
Those three “size medium” boxes are now down to one very small box. In the end I couldn’t throw out the hospital bracelets, the handmade picture frames from preschool, the personalized 1987 California license plate from my short-lived Beamer 2002, the kids’ tap dance and ballet shoes from kindergarten age…
But the one-foot by three-foot Mother’s Day card Paul got me in 1985 is now a photo in our Picasa Albums. The birthday cards, old family letters, kids’ artwork, restaurant napkins, are being scanned into our photo files, as are those old Bruce Springsteen tickets.
Talk about a win-win proposition. Not only do I not have those bulky boxes taking up space in my life, holding things I would never access anyway, but I now get access to all those memories, right on my hard drive. With the click of a few buttons I can recall every birthday and Mother’s Day card I ever received. The letters my family wrote me when we lived in the Czech Republic? All there. The kids’ artwork, the old postcards, the oversized framed photos…which one would you like to see?
What’s not to love about that?
Catalog Choice
Last but not least, Chelsea has been using Catalogue Choice for the last several years to get our names off junk mail lists and off the ubiquitous catalogue lists. We are quite sure one of the online stores we used sold our names, and we know who it is, but suffice it to say that shortly after we bought those few items our mailbox was increasingly flooded with new catalogues.
It’s taken a bit of focus on Chelsea’s part, but not too much time, especially considering how happy we are with the results.
A few years ago I taught several seminars to real estate investors on organizing their offices and businesses. I saved all our mail for one week to make a point on dealing with mail. My end result was two full garbage bags of mailers, catalogues, unsolicited offers from various companies, and ads, mixed in with our regular bills and letters. Astounding.
We now receive only a few unsolicited ads a week, no mailers, and only the monthly catalogues we have chosen to receive (two). Many days the mailman drives right by because there’s nothing for us. How cool is that?
We are huge fans of Catalogue Choice. Click on the logo on our website and set yourself up on it. You won’t regret it.
Final Tally
So here we are, many months later. We have an empty echoing house from moving on all our furniture and belongings; we’ve scanned forty-five hundred photos to date covering over sixty years (just a few stragglers are left); we’ve copied and begun organizing thousands of music files; we created a fabulous slideshow for Alex; we’ve copied perhaps a hundred fifty movies to our hard drive; and let’s not forget the treasures found on those pesky floppy disks.
Not only have we cleared a staggering amount of clutter and bulk from our lives, but we have greatly increased the fun and joy for our trip.
All those photos once lost in piles of “stuff” in our memory boxes tucked away in storage? They are organized by person and place, ready to show to any new acquaintances, and ready for us to bring out and enjoy when we get lonely.
Our music files? Ready to create wonderful playlists whenever and wherever we want.
Our movies? Ready to watch at a moment’s notice, with a choice of dozens and dozens, depending only on our mood.
We’ve significantly reduced the bulk and weight of our trip gear by digitizing everything, and have added more fun, more joy and infinitely more options.
What abundance! What freedom!