Organizing

So I recently spent a whole Saturday organizing all of our photos on the computer by date and event and then backing them up on an external hard drive.

(I make it sound very easy and stress free....in reality, the day we bought the external hard drive, we also bought the mother of all surge protectors. When we got home, Zeb turned everything off to re-plug everything into this amazing surge protector and this was the moment the computer decided to not reboot properly. This was the moment our computer broke. With all my precious pictures neatly organized and unreachable. I was definitely unhappy. sad. mad. sad again. Fast forward one week and all of the data was recovered for us by a company nearby. yay! So now my precious pictures are living happily on an external hard drive.)

Having them so neatly organized makes my organizing self feel confident that they'll be around as long as I need them to be.

However, I happened to pick up the KC Star this week when they were covering this exact topic and that's when the extra stress set in. The article brought to my attention all the pictures that weren't digital, that weren't nicely organized on my external hard drive. What about those pictures? They are in a different format, in a different place altogether. How will those memories be preserved and organized?

The article actually suggested scanning them into the computer so you have them digitally. Seriously? All 29 years of pictures? Who has time to do that? Or, the article said, I could pay to have it done.....

After a week long panic attack, I decided to move forward archiving the digital pictures in the same manner I have been and not have a coronary over the pictures not in digital format. (I'm an organizing fool so this was a hard decision to accept).

I realize this may seem like a trivial worry (I've been known to worry over trivial things), but pictures are the things I treasure most-when it comes down to the things I would save in a fire, I would get my pup and my pictures. 

Is this something you think about? How are your pictures preserved for years to come? What about your prints before the digital age?