3. Building Your House of Memories — Organize, Prioritize and Digitalize!
Okay, so you have determined whose memories you want to build your house of memories from, and you’ve determined your tags and key words for your memory collection. Now what?
You likely have boxes, or files, or disks, or USBs, or a collection of photos on your phone or computer, where your memories are stored. Here’s what you need to do to make creating your house of memories as easy and enjoyable as possible.
1. Organize all of the files and documents you have into categories.
Start with the printed documents, then move to photos, videos and other more obscure or uncommon mediums (art, books, architectural drawings, etc.). Sort through them all. Put them into logical categories, either by “themes” or by “dates”. For example, create categories for “Family” or “Travel” or “Friends”, or organize the life into “Childhood” and “Education” and “Family Life”. You will need to create the categories based on the person / group whose memories you are organizing. You may need the help of an archivist or librarian, or someone who works in the media, to help you figure out how to categorize your documents.
2. Prioritize which documents you want to focus on first.
What types of mediums are the most rich in terms of memories stored? For most people, this will be photos or videos. But perhaps your mother or grandmother was a writer, or collected paintings, or had antiques or memorabilia from years past. What parts of your physical collection will be the most interesting to who you are going to share them with?
3. Digitalize your assets
“Save as” in a consistent, logical way, and go through the painstaking process of organizing everything that you have physically into digital format. Regardless of the size of your collection, this will take discipline. It will also take good technology. If you don’t have a decent scanner on your home based printer, either invest in one, or find a local print / office store where you can go to scan your documents yourself, or pay someone to do that for you. This may be a good job for a newcomer to your community who is looking for a job, or for a young student looking for money to augment their lifestyle.
4. Plan time to do this “work which is a hobby / passion”.
Life is busy. We all have other things we need to do every day — work, eat, exercise, take care of our families, go shopping, take care of pets, learn, etc. Building your house of memories requires your time — you need to find a way to add “Build My House of Memories” to your daily schedule. This may require you to stop doing other things for a few months. If that is difficult, ask for support from your partner or family to give you the time you need to build your legacy.
Now get started! Enjoy the process of learning, reflecting, and imagining the life others in your family, community or organization have led, and what their life will mean to future generations. The tedious process of preparing to upload your files to your house of memories is similar to what it takes when we exercise. It is difficult and painful when it happens, and sometimes hard to get started, but the benefits afterwards are tremendous.
Enjoy! And look forward to the next steps coming in the next blog post!
If this one is the first article of the series “How to Build your House of Memories” definitely you should read those previous ones:
- How to Build Your House of Memories — Where Do I Start, and Who Do I Focus on First
- Building Your House of Memories — Determine Your Tagging, “Save As” and Sharing Practices Before You Start
Here follow the next ones. Follow the next article to define how to build your House of Memories!
