How To Keep Your Holiday Photos Safe

Updated 3/7/21

Do you remember that commercial with all of the pictures standing inside some guy’s camera, all squished together like they were riding on a subway car at rush hour?  They’d all jockey for position hoping that they wouldn’t be the picture that would get deleted to make room for whatever the camera owner wanted to take a picture of next.  It was hysterical!  Unless you’re the picture that gets deleted.  Or the owner of the camera who has to decide which of his favorite pictures to deleted so he can take another.

So how many photos are YOU going to take this Christmas or Hanukkah?

The picture of your toddler opening up her first tricycle?

The shot of your husband nearly knocking over the TV trying to put the star on the tree?

And how many of them will still be around for you to enjoy next year?

Not so funny, is it?  

There are two things that put every picture you take, in jeopardy.  The first is not taking the time to download the pictures you’ve already taken, onto your computer for safekeeping.   The second, is not being prepared to capture that once-in-a-lifetime photo whenever it happens.

Here are two simple steps, you can take that will completely eliminate the danger of losing this year’s special memories.

1) Do not, do not, do not use anything but a regular digital or video camera to take photos during the holidays.  Don’t grab the cell phone to snap the picture of the entire family including 101 year old Grandpa Charlie around the Christmas table.  Very few cell phones have enough megapixels to grab a good enough picture for the family to keep and share.  It might be convenient, but you know as well as I do that you’re going to get a blurry or fuzzy shot instead of what you really want.  And even you do manage to snap a Mona Lisa, you’re going to forget to email it to yourself, so don’t even think about it!

2) Instead, choose your best digital camera and keep it at your side throughout the holidays.  Keep it charged, or even better keep an extra battery charged as well.  And while you’re at it, keep an extra SD card ready to swap out, just in case your Hanukkah dinner ends up being photo-intensive than you thought.  To add an additional level of safety, draft another relative to do exactly the same thing so that you’ll get full coverage of every event.  Then you can get together when the holidays are over, compare your work and send the best photos to all of your relatives on a CD.   Now that’s a holiday to remember.

3) Don’t let the memory card on your camera get so full that you have to start deleting pictures!   In fact don’t let it get anywhere near full.   At the end of every evening make yourself take five minutes to download that day’s photos to your computer.  Make sure you already have the USB cable next to your computer before you leave for the evening so you won’t have any excuses when you get back home.  Get your kids or your husband to promise not to let you go to bed without downloading them, even if you have to leave the camera on the bed as a reminder.

4) If you’re really bad at remembering to download your photos to your computer, then watch the video above.  The secret is to let the your camera or phone do the downloading for you.  How?  Buy a wireless camera like the Canon Power Shot. Wi-Fi digital cameras automatically connect to the Wi-Fi connection in your home to upload your photos from your camera to your computer, without you having to lift a finger.  If you don’t have a wireless camera or don’t want to purchase a new one, get an Eye-Fi card.  Eye-Fi is an SD card with a built-in wireless connection that will do exactly the same thing.  We’ll get into more details about it in another blog post, but you can be in Italy sipping espresso at a sidewalk café with a Wi-Fi connection and your photos will begin appearing on your computer back home, safe and sound until you get return.

This year, don’t leave your photos to chance.  Take a moment to take these two simple steps and before you know it, you’ll be enjoying this year’s holiday photos.  While you’re putting up the ornaments next year.

Have Fun Getting Your Stuff Together!

Back It Up

I don’t know about you, but the most important keepsakes in our house are our old family photos, followed closely by our home movies and music. But grabbing piles of photo albums and all your picture frames off the walls is pretty hard to do when you’re running out the door! With Back It Up, you’ll learn quick, easy steps to back up your print/digital photos, home movies, music (including vinyl & cassettes) and save them in multiple, disaster proof locations. Paperback Or Instant Download

Keep Everything You Love Safe | The Book Inspired By The Blog
Keep Everything You Love Safe, is filled with quick, easy, 5 minute steps you can take right now, to get everything that’s important to you organized, safe, sound and accessible. Each section covers a different area, from backing up and fixing family photos, home movies and music, to vital documents, medical and financial information and even getting your digital life in order. Paperback Or Instant Download

Keep The Stuff You Love Safe

How To Save Your Treasured Voice Mail Messages

How To Save Your Home Movies And Videos

How To Archive Your Digital Photos

How To Archive Your Print Photos

How To Make A Home Inventory

How To Get Your Financial Life In Order

How To Preserve Your Family History

How To Back Up Your Facebook Friends List

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Mobile Command Center

How To Backup Your Music, MP3s And Vinyl Albums

How To Access Your Money No Matter Where You Are

 

How To Back Up Your Parent’s Print Photos

Updated 3/7/21

How To Back Up Your Parent’s Printed Photos 

I don’t know about you, but the worst part about watching coverage of earthquakes — like the quakes in Ecuador and Japan — is the look on victim’s faces as they pick through the rubble of their homes, trying to find a photo of their wedding or of their children.  

In today’s world, now that we have smartphones, taking photos has become a daily event.  If one gets harmed or destroyed, we just print out another copy.  Not true though for old family photos that are hanging on the wall, or worse, stuck like glue inside a yellowed photo album.  

And where will you find most of those old photos?  At your parent’s and grandparent’s house — where unfortunately one-of-a-kind can mean just that.  One copy and that’s it! What a horrible thing it would be for them or for you to be left without the pictures you treasure the most, especially when keeping them safe and sound is so easy.

So give this post a quick read, grab the tools you need for the job and let’s get Mom and Dad’s photos and cameras squared away once and for all!

As you know, there are two types of photos.  The first are photo prints – basically anything that is a physical photo, whether it’s in a frame, in an album or lurking in the back of a kitchen or desk drawer.  In order to archive those photos, you’ll need to scan them and get them into a digital format so that they can be put on a computer or portable hard drive.  That’s what we’ll be dealing with in this article.  The second type of photo is a digital photo – which we help you back up and archive in another post.  

One thing that makes print photos harder to archive than other keepsakes is the simple fact that we get so used to seeing our favorite photos hanging around the house, that we don’t always think to take them off the wall and scan them for safekeeping.  

So your first task is to locate all of your parent’s physical photos.  Don’t forget to look for all the albums, photos in drawers or files and those hanging in frames on the walls or sitting on the bookshelf.   Then you’ll decide which of those photos you want to archive for safekeeping.  After that, we’ll get them scanned.  

If there are a lot of photos around the house, you’ll probably need some help dealing with all of your pictures.  Why not declare one day “scanning day”.  Invite a bunch of good friends over to help, and if you have as much fun as we think you will, next time have them bring over their own photos to scan.  Do you have kids?  That’s even better – they’ll have a great time helping.

1. Grab a pencil and paper

…and go around the house jotting down all the non-digital photos or photo collections you want to secure and their current location.

2. Gather all of the photos that you located.

Although all of your photos are important, some mean more to your parents than others.

Take a few moments to look at the photo albums, prints and framed photos and separate them into two different piles.

• In the first pile, place photos that you want to copy and save in a digital format, for safekeeping.

• In the second pile, place photos that you:

  • Already have in digital format and could easily recopy if the one you’re holding was harmed or destroyed.

  • Have numerous other copies of the photo in other locations. Check to make sure that this is actually true, before you decide not to scan them.

  • Simply don’t care enough about to keep it disaster safe.

• You can go ahead and put the photos in the second pile back where you found them.

3. Scan Away!

Take the photos in the first pile, scan each one and download it to your computer, placing them in a brand new folder. When you’re finished, make one copy of that complete folder.  Place the original folder in with the other digital photos on your computer.  Then place the copy of the folder into the backup folder you created earlier.

If you already have digital photos on your computer, save these scanned photos to a new folder within your photos folder.  For example, ScannedPrintPhotos, so you’ll know at a glance which photos are the ones you scanned.

4. Make Sure You Back Up ALL Your Photos To At Least Three Locations

Once you have finished scanning, copy that folder containing all of your photos — the digital ones and the ones you just scanned and save it with a different name, like Photo Archive Backup, with today’s date.   Place a copy of your backup folder in at least three different locations.  Here are a few suggestions of safe places to store them:

•On a flash drive or portable hard drive, and take them with you during evacuation on a key ring or in your plastic evacuation bin.

•On a flash drive or portable hard drive, in a safe deposit box or water/fireproof safe in your own city.

•On a flash drive or portable hard drive, in a safe deposit box, water/fireproof safe, or with relatives in the city where you’ll be evacuating.

•In a password-protected online file repository or on the file directory of your family’s personal web site.  This way, you can retrieve them from any Internet-enabled computer.

•You can also save an extra copy of your photos on Flickr or another internet photo service.  But this really shouldn’t be your long-term solution or only solution, since you have no control over these sites and could lose all of your data without any warning.

•If you really want to keep photos on a secure site that you can share with your family, try iMemories.com.  Not only do they have great servers with outstanding redundant backup capability, but they can even put your photos on DVD for you, providing an extra layer of safety.

If you need more help scanning your photos — or if you have delicate or color challenged photos that need a bit more attention, here are a few tips.

How To Scan Your Photos

There are several great ways to scan your photos.  Just to clarify, a scanner is different than a copy machine, because a scanner makes an exact digital copy of a photo.  It’s a world of difference from a photo copy, which is usually pretty bad.  In many cases a scan of a photo is better than the original.  And the nice thing about them is that once you scan a photo, you can save it onto your computer, share it with family and friends or use photo software to correct faded color, repair damage or otherwise restore old photographs.

Most printers available now are three or four in one printers, that scan as well as print.  You can also scan your photos with a dedicated flatbed scanner (all it does is scan).

Or you can scan your photos with a portable wand scanner, as we mentioned earlier.  Portable wand scanners, like the VuPoint Wand Scanner, have come a long way.  They run on batteries or are rechargeable and save anything you scan onto an SD card.  From there, you can download the scans/photos directly to your computer, via a USB cord, or you can pop the SD card out of the scanner and pop it into your computer to archive your scans.

The best part about having a portable wand scanner is that you can scan photos, documents, even things like marriage certificates or historical documents by swiping the scanner over it, instead of having to take all of those documents home and putting them, one at a time, through your scanner.  It’s especially good, like we said, for scanning photos at relative’s homes.  If they don’t want the photo leaving the house, just take the scanner over and scan the photos you want.   Amazingly, if you’re dealing with a fragile photo, you can even scan it right in the frame.  Or if you have delicate photos in a photo album – have you ever tried to peel photos out of an album without damaging them – you can simply open the book and sweep the scanner over the page.  Then all you have to do is open the scanned page and crop the photos apart, saving each one as a separate photo.  Photos archived, originals safeguarded!

One other scanner we wanted to mention is one that stands out among all the others in the marketplace, for color correction. It’s the Epson Perfection line of scanners, with Epson’s Easy Photo Fix software.   There are several models on Amazon.com.  Do you have any of those photos from the seventies and eighties that ended up a muddled brown-orange mess?   All you have to do is use the Auto Fix setting on the scanner and then scan your seventies photos.  The scanner corrects the color while it scans.  Truly amazing!  

If you don’t have access to a scanner, then have a relative or friend scan them for you.  Scanning is by far the cheapest and most effective way of safeguarding your important photos.  If you can’t get them scanned, go to a copy shop like Fed Ex-Kinko’s and have copies made of all your photos, using non-acid paper.  This will ensure that they will last longer and will fade less as they age.

Now that you know what you’re doing, scan all the loose prints that you want to preserve.  The higher the dpi the better the quality, so use 300 or 600 on your oldest, most treasured photos.  Then save the scans to your computer to back them up.

Have Fun Getting Your Stuff Together!

Back It Up

I don’t know about you, but the most important keepsakes in our house are our old family photos, followed closely by our home movies and music. But grabbing piles of photo albums and all your picture frames off the walls is pretty hard to do when you’re running out the door! With Back It Up, you’ll learn quick, easy steps to back up your print/digital photos, home movies, music (including vinyl & cassettes) and save them in multiple, disaster proof locations. Paperback Or Instant Download

Keep Everything You Love Safe | The Book Inspired By The Blog
Keep Everything You Love Safe, is filled with quick, easy, 5 minute steps you can take right now, to get everything that’s important to you organized, safe, sound and accessible. Each section covers a different area, from backing up and fixing family photos, home movies and music, to vital documents, medical and financial information and even getting your digital life in order. Paperback Or Instant Download

Keep The Stuff You Love Safe

How To Save Your Treasured Voice Mail Messages

How To Save Your Home Movies And Videos

How To Archive Your Digital Photos

How To Archive Your Print Photos

How To Make A Home Inventory

How To Get Your Financial Life In Order

How To Preserve Your Family History

How To Back Up Your Facebook Friends List

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Mobile Command Center

How To Backup Your Music, MP3s And Vinyl Albums

How To Access Your Money No Matter Where You Are

How To Back Up ALL Your Music – Even Vinyl!

Updated 9/28/2021

How much do you LOVE your music?  

For most of us, it’s not just a bunch of CDs and MP3s.  It’s the soundtrack of our lives.  And when you have something that important, you want to make sure that it’s around, safe and sound for a long, long time. 

So let’s take a few minutes, grab that music collection of yours and back it up for safekeeping.  And who knows?  You might even be able to put that amazing vinyl jazz solo you love, on your smartphone!

1. Back Up Your MP3s

Do you have MP3 or other digital music files on your computer, smartphone or other devices? 

On your PC or Mac, create a folder called “Backup Music (dd/mm/yy)” using today’s date.

Grab all of your devices and take a few moments to download, send or save all of your MP3s (or other digital music files) to your computer.  Then put all of those MP3s into the backup folder. 

Locate all of the digital music on your computer’s hard drive.  Leaving the originals where they are, make copies of the music folders and place them into the backup folder.

2. Deal With CDs, Cassettes & Vinyl Albums

Gather all your CDs, Vinyl Albums and Cassettes and set them on a nearby table.

Although all of your music is important, some means more to you than others. 

Separate your CDs, cassettes and vinyl albums into two piles.

• Pile One: Music you love that you want to copy and preserve digitally for safekeeping.

• Pile Two:  Music that you:

  • A) Already have in MP3 format.

  • B) Have numerous copies of the album in other locations (double check that this is true).

  • C) Simply don’t care about preserving.

Go ahead and put the music in pile two back where you found it.

3. Convert Your CDs to MP3s

Convert the CDs to MP3s using Windows Media Player (for PCs) or Audacity for Mac.  Just pop in the CD into your computer, open the software and follow the instructions.

Once they’re ripped, save copies of each album to the regular music folder on your computer and to your new backup folder.

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to download your favorite songs to your iPod or smartphone.

4. Convert Your Cassettes & Albums to MP3s

Here are a few easy ways we’ve found to convert your cassettes or albums to MP3s.

There are several vinyl album to MP3 recorders available including the ION Audio Premier LP Turntable Vinyl Record Player.  The nice thing about that one is that it converts cassettes and vinyl to CD or to MP3s.  And if you only have cassettes to convert, there is the Reshow Cassette Player  MP3 Converter. 

Once you’ve saved copies of your cassettes and vinyl albums, save them to the regular music folder on your computer, to your new backup folder and don’t forget to put your favorites on your smartphone or MP3 player.

And while you’re at it, how about helping mom, dad, grandma or grandpa preserve their old albums while you’re at it.  An MP3 player or new iPhone X or Samsung Galaxy full of their favorite songs would make a GREAT gift!

5.  Backing Up Your Music For Safe Keeping

Since we’ve been talking about preserving your music, once you’ve got it all backed up, it only makes sense to keep it safe and sound. 

So save a copy of your Backup Music folder onto a flash drive or a portable hard drive and place it in at least two secure, damage-proof locations, away from home for safekeeping. 

Here are a few suggestions on places to put it:

• In a watertight Plastic Evacuation Bin. 

• In a safe deposit box in your own city.

• In a water/fireproof safe in your own city.

• In a safe deposit in a pre-determined evacuation location

• In a password protected file on Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive or family web site.

High Tech Toys

Here are some of our favorite high-tech tools and toys to help you get all of your favorite photos, music, home videos, movies – and anything else that can be stored digitally – backed up, stored and accessible.  Wherever you are.  Whatever is going on around you.  24/7. 

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020

Anker PowerCore 5000 Portable Charger

Axis Self-Powered Safety Hub

Canon PowerShot Wi-Fi Enabled ELPH 190 Digital Camera

ClearClick Video to Digital Converter

Epson Perfection V600 Photo, Film, & Document Scanner

ez Share WiFi SD Card

Fireproof Document Bags

Sentry Fireproof/Waterproof  Lateral File Cabinet

SentrySafe Fireproof and Waterproof Safe

HP Photo Printer All-in-One Wireless Envy 7120

ION Audio Premier LP Turntable Vinyl Record Player

Kodak P570 Personal Photo Scanner

Magnavox VHS to DVD Combo Recorder

Reshow Cassette Player  MP3 Converter

Rocketbook Smart Reusable Notebook

SanDisk 32GB Connect Wireless Stick Flash Drive

SanDisk 32GB iXpand Flash Drive for iPhone and iPad

Sony 4K HD Video Camcorder

Sony HX400V Compact Digital Camera

VuPoint Handheld Magic Wand Portable Scanner

The COVID pandemic has created a new list of toys that people can’t do without — including some very cool high-tech solutions to unexpected challenges.  Like staying healthy and working from home!  Here are some of our favorites.

Cubii Pro Seated Under Desk Elliptical Machine

I’m Smiling On The Inside Face Masks

iHealth No-Touch Forehead Thermometer

iProvèn Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor

KODAK Luma 150 Pocket Projector

No-Touch Door Opener, Button Pusher Tool

Owlet Smart Sock 2 Baby Monitor

PhoneSoap 3 UV Smartphone Sanitizer

Sony Tie-Clip-Style Omnidirectional Microphone

Total Gym APEX G5 Total Body Strength Training

Zacurate Fingertip Pulse Oximeter

For a book’s worth of tips and tools on getting your stuff organized, backed up and together, pick up a copy of our books “Back It Up” and “Write It Down” in paperback or via instant download.

Have Fun Getting Your Stuff Together!

Keep Everything You Love Safe | The Book Inspired By The Blog

Keep Everything You Love Safe, is filled with quick, easy, 5 minute steps you can take right now, to get everything that’s important to you organized, safe, sound and accessible. Each section covers a different area, from backing up and fixing family photos, home movies and music, to vital documents, medical and financial information and even getting your digital life in order. Paperback Or Instant Download

 

Back It Up

I don’t know about you, but the most important keepsakes in our house are our old family photos, followed closely by our home movies and music. But grabbing piles of photo albums and all your picture frames off the walls is pretty hard to do when you’re running out the door! With Back It Up, you’ll learn quick, easy steps to back up your print/digital photos, home movies, music (including vinyl & cassettes) and save them in multiple, disaster proof locations. Paperback Or Instant Download

 

Keep The Stuff You Love Safe

How To Save Your Treasured Voice Mail Messages

How To Save Your Home Movies And Videos

How To Archive Your Digital Photos

How To Archive Your Print Photos

How To Make A Home Inventory

How To Get Your Financial Life In Order

How To Preserve Your Family History

How To Back Up Your Facebook Friends List

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Mobile Command Center

How To Backup Your Music, MP3s And Vinyl Albums

How To Access Your Money No Matter Where You Are

How To Back Up Your LinkedIn Contacts

Updated 5/3/21

Quick.  Name all the people that you’re connected to on LinkedIn.

You’ve got two minutes…

Time’s up.  Well could you do it?   No?  Uh oh.  

Because all of that work you put into making your LinkedIn account the masterpiece that it is, can be gone in an instant.  Why?  Because LinkedIn is a web site with millions of users and billions of entries.  As hard as they try to maintain it and keep all of your contacts and information safe, all it takes is one electronic hiccup or hacked account and — well you get the idea.

But the GOOD news is, that won’t happen to you.  Why? Because you’re about to learn a secret.  You can download and backup all of your business contacts from LinkedIn.  Not only is it easy, but you can even put all your connections right into Outlook giving you instant access to all your LinkedIn friends.

Take Action! 

1. I Can Really Download My Contacts?  

Yes, you really can, email addresses. articles you’ve written and everything else!

First log into LinkedIn and click on My Network from the Menu Bar.  

 

 

2. Then Click On Connections

On the extreme right hand side of the screen, click on Manage Synced and Imported Contacts to open…

…Get A Copy Of Your Data.  Here you can download ALL of the data you have in LinkedIn, or just specific data like your Contacts.  Chose what you want to download as I did below and hit Request Archive.  

3. Export Your Connections To Your Computer

You’ll receive an email when your download is ready.  Then simply save it to your desktop for safekeeping.

If you use Microsoft Outlook, don’t forget that you can import your contacts/connections information directly into Outlook.   Here’s how you do it in Outlook 2010:

• Open Outlook and click on the File menu

• Choose Open

• Choose Import and then From Another Program or File

• For file type, choose Comma Separated Values

• Browse your desktop to locate the LinkedIn File you just downloaded and Import.

4. Keep It Safe

Once you download your LinkedIn Backup Files onto your computer, you can also:

• Save  it to your password-protected Dropbox, iCloud or OneDrive for safekeeping.

• Save it to a  flash drive or portable hard drive, and place it with the rest of your backup files:

  • In a safe deposit box or water/fireproof safe in your own city.

  • In your watertight Plastic Evacuation Bin. 

  • In your file cabinet at work/office. 

High Tech Toys

By the way, here are some of our favorite high-tech tools and toys to help you get all of your favorite photos, music, home videos, movies – and anything else that can be stored digitally – backed up, stored and accessible.  Wherever you are.  Whatever is going on around you.  24/7. 

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020

Anker PowerCore 5000 Portable Charger

Axis Self-Powered Safety Hub

Canon PowerShot Wi-Fi Enabled ELPH 190 Digital Camera

ClearClick Video to Digital Converter

Epson Perfection V600 Photo, Film, & Document Scanner

ez Share WiFi SD Card

Fireproof Document Bags

Sentry Fireproof/Waterproof  Lateral File Cabinet

SentrySafe Fireproof and Waterproof Safe

HP Photo Printer All-in-One Wireless Envy 7120

ION Audio Premier LP Turntable Vinyl Record Player

Kodak P570 Personal Photo Scanner

Magnavox VHS to DVD Combo Recorder

Reshow Cassette Player  MP3 Converter

Rocketbook Smart Reusable Notebook

SanDisk 32GB Connect Wireless Stick Flash Drive

SanDisk 32GB iXpand Flash Drive for iPhone and iPad

Sony 4K HD Video Camcorder

Sony HX400V Compact Digital Camera

VuPoint Handheld Magic Wand Portable Scanner

The COVID pandemic has created a new list of toys that people can’t do without — including some very cool high-tech solutions to unexpected challenges.  Like staying healthy and working from home!  Here are some of our favorites.

Cubii Pro Seated Under Desk Elliptical Machine

I’m Smiling On The Inside Face Masks

iHealth No-Touch Forehead Thermometer

iProvèn Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor

KODAK Luma 150 Pocket Projector

No-Touch Door Opener, Button Pusher Tool

Owlet Smart Sock 2 Baby Monitor

PhoneSoap 3 UV Smartphone Sanitizer

Sony Tie-Clip-Style Omnidirectional Microphone

Total Gym APEX G5 Total Body Strength Training

Zacurate Fingertip Pulse Oximeter

For a book’s worth of tips and tools on getting your stuff organized, backed up and together, pick up a copy of our books “Back It Up” and “Write It Down” in paperback or via instant download.

Have Fun Getting Your Stuff Together!

Keep Everything You Love Safe | The Book Inspired By The Blog

Keep Everything You Love Safe, is filled with quick, easy, 5 minute steps you can take right now, to get everything that’s important to you organized, safe, sound and accessible. Each section covers a different area, from backing up and fixing family photos, home movies and music, to vital documents, medical and financial information and even getting your digital life in order. Paperback Or Instant Download

 

How To Organize Your Digital Life

How To Organize Your Digital Life gives a place to record all of your passwords, account information and even emergency instructions, along with secure ways to access them remotely, putting your social media life and your business life exactly where it belongs. At your fingertips. Paperback Or Instant Download

 

 

Keep The Stuff You Love Safe

How To Save Your Treasured Voice Mail Messages

How To Save Your Home Movies And Videos

How To Archive Your Digital Photos

How To Archive Your Print Photos

How To Make A Home Inventory

How To Get Your Financial Life In Order

How To Preserve Your Family History

How To Back Up Your Facebook Friends List

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Mobile Command Center

How To Backup Your Music, MP3s And Vinyl Albums

How To Access Your Money No Matter Where You Are

 

How To Back Up Your #Facebook Friends List

Updated 9/28/2021

Quick. Name all the people that you’re friends with on Facebook.

You’ve got two minutes…

Time’s up. 

Well could you do it?  No?  Oh no!   Because all of that work you put into making your Facebook page the masterpiece that it is, can be gone in an instant.  Not just yours, but anyone’s.  That’s because Facebook is a web site with millions of users and billions of entries.  As hard as they try to maintain it and keep all of your uploads and pictures and information safe, all of it is just one electronic hiccup or hacked account away from disappearing.   In an instant.

But the GOOD news is, that won’t happen to you.  Because you’re about to learn something very few people know. 

You can download and backup all of the information in your Facebook timeline for safekeeping, which not only means you would be able to restore it, but you’ll be able to remember exactly who is on your friends list.

Just follow the instructions below and all of the information on your Timeline will be safe and secure right on your personal computer or portable hard drive.  

So here goes…

 

Take Action! 

I Can Download My Friends List?  Really?

Yes, you really can!   Using the instructions below, you can download a lot of the information in your Facebook account, including:

• Your Friends List

• Your Contact Information

• Interests

• Groups

• Photos and Videos that you have uploaded to your account

• Messages that you have sent and received

1. First Go To Account Settings

Just log into your Facebook account, and click on the Down Arrow on the right side of your Account Menu and choose Settings & Privacy.  

On the next screen choose Settings.

On the next screen choose Your Facebook Information.

On the next screen find Download Your Information and choose View.

2. Download Your Information

Here you’ll see a list of all of the information in your account that you can download.  To download everything, just keep all the boxes on the right of the list, checked.  Or you can press deselect and select only the information you want.

• Then Click on Create File.

• Follow the prompts to enter your password and you’ll receive a message when your archive file is ready.  Then Download the Archive of your Facebook Data to your computer. 

3. Keep It Safe

As Facebook suggests, since this download contains your profile (timeline) information, you should keep it secure and take precautions when storing, sending or uploading it to any other services.

Once you download your Facebook Backup File onto your computer, you can also:

• Save  it to your password-protected Dropbox, iCloud or OneDrive for safekeeping.

• Save it to a  flash drive or portable hard drive, and place it with the rest of your backup files:

  • In a safe deposit box or water/fireproof safe in your own city.

  • In your watertight Plastic Evacuation Bin. 

  • In your file cabinet at work/office. 

High Tech Toys

Here are some of our favorite high-tech tools and toys to help you get all of your favorite photos, music, home videos, movies – and anything else that can be stored digitally – backed up, stored and accessible.  Wherever you are.  Whatever is going on around you.  24/7. 

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020

Anker PowerCore 5000 Portable Charger

Axis Self-Powered Safety Hub

Canon PowerShot Wi-Fi Enabled ELPH 190 Digital Camera

ClearClick Video to Digital Converter

Epson Perfection V600 Photo, Film, & Document Scanner

ez Share WiFi SD Card

Fireproof Document Bags

Sentry Fireproof/Waterproof  Lateral File Cabinet

SentrySafe Fireproof and Waterproof Safe

HP Photo Printer All-in-One Wireless Envy 7120

ION Audio Premier LP Turntable Vinyl Record Player

Kodak P570 Personal Photo Scanner

Magnavox VHS to DVD Combo Recorder

Reshow Cassette Player  MP3 Converter

Rocketbook Smart Reusable Notebook

SanDisk 32GB Connect Wireless Stick Flash Drive

SanDisk 32GB iXpand Flash Drive for iPhone and iPad

Sony 4K HD Video Camcorder

Sony HX400V Compact Digital Camera

VuPoint Handheld Magic Wand Portable Scanner

The COVID pandemic has created a new list of toys that people can’t do without — including some very cool high-tech solutions to unexpected challenges.  Like staying healthy and working from home!  Here are some of our favorites.

Cubii Pro Seated Under Desk Elliptical Machine

I’m Smiling On The Inside Face Masks

iHealth No-Touch Forehead Thermometer

iProvèn Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor

KODAK Luma 150 Pocket Projector

No-Touch Door Opener, Button Pusher Tool

Owlet Smart Sock 2 Baby Monitor

PhoneSoap 3 UV Smartphone Sanitizer

Sony Tie-Clip-Style Omnidirectional Microphone

Total Gym APEX G5 Total Body Strength Training

Zacurate Fingertip Pulse Oximeter

For a book’s worth of tips and tools on getting your stuff organized, backed up and together, pick up a copy of our books “Back It Up” and “Keep Everything You Love Safe” in paperback or via instant download.

Have Fun Getting Your Stuff Together!

Keep Everything You Love Safe | The Book Inspired By The Blog

Keep Everything You Love Safe, is filled with quick, easy, 5 minute steps you can take right now, to get everything that’s important to you organized, safe, sound and accessible. Each section covers a different area, from backing up and fixing family photos, home movies and music, to vital documents, medical and financial information and even getting your digital life in order. Paperback Or Instant Download

 

Back It Up

I don’t know about you, but the most important keepsakes in our house are our old family photos, followed closely by our home movies and music. But grabbing piles of photo albums and all your picture frames off the walls is pretty hard to do when you’re running out the door! With Back It Up, you’ll learn quick, easy steps to back up your print/digital photos, home movies, music (including vinyl & cassettes) and save them in multiple, disaster proof locations. Paperback Or Instant Download

 

Keep The Stuff You Love Safe

How To Save Your Treasured Voice Mail Messages

How To Save Your Home Movies And Videos

How To Archive Your Digital Photos

How To Archive Your Print Photos

How To Make A Home Inventory

How To Get Your Financial Life In Order

How To Preserve Your Family History

How To Back Up Your Facebook Friends List

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Mobile Command Center

How To Backup Your Music, MP3s And Vinyl Albums

How To Access Your Money No Matter Where You Are

As Amazon Associates we earn commissions from qualifying purchases made from product links.

 

How To Back Up Your Address Book

Updated 3/7/21

Let’s say your spouse or best friend decides to throw you a surprise party… 

If they opened up your address book, would they find the current names and contact information for your friends and relatives?  Or would you end up with a room full of long forgotten former neighbors and all your friends from Camp Wannamochachino? That’s what I thought.  Which means that in an emergency, your spouse or best friend would have absolutely NO chance of locating the names of people they need to contact ASAP.  So how about some quick tips on getting your address book in pristine shape quickly and painlessly?

Take Action! 

Here are a few simple ways to get your address book organized, backed up, useable and accessible.

1. Hunting Down Those Scraps of Paper

Grab all of those slips of paper, you’ve been keeping, with your friend’s updated phone numbers and emails .  And don’t forget the addresses you tore off the Christmas card envelopes & the notes at the bottom of your purse.  Now go update your address book!

Do you have more entries than you have space?  Then consider keeping only the basic information you need in your main book —  like the land line and cell number plus one email address.  Then relegate the rest of the numbers and information to one major address list on your computer.  That way you have  what you need at your fingertips without having to forage through every bit of information, just to find your aunt’s phone number.

2. Keeping It Up To Date

If your book has more cross outs and erasures that it does entries, it might be time to rethink the type of address book you use.  Even though it’s a pain to have to change emails, addresses and phone numbers every time your friends or relatives move, one change doesn’t mean you have to toss out the whole book and start over.

Here’s a great solution that actually works.  It’s called  Circa Address Book from Levenger.  In it, each person’s entry is actually a square, perforated information slip.  So if someone messes up your book by getting a new phone number, all you have to do is tear out that entry and replace it with a new one, leaving the rest of your book intact. Brilliant!

3. Put That Book In Its Place!

Always keep your address book in the same place, and make sure the place makes sense, like a drawer in the desk where you pay your bills or work on your computer.    An address book is no good to you if it’s hiding under your couch!

4. Don’t Keep The Location To Yourself

Once your book is updated, tell your spouse, roommate or if you live alone, mother or best friend, where you keep your address book, in case of emergency.

5. Talk Isn’t Always Cheap

Have a quick conversation with your spouse, best friend or parent about which people you would want them to notify, if you were seriously injured.

To be safe, you can also put a star like this ** or other special mark next to each of those names in your address book, along with a notation at the beginning of your address book, explaining the reason for the stars.

6. Now What Do I Do With It?

Copy or scan your address book once a year (or every six months if  your friends move  a lot).  Save the copy in a different location than your book and a second copy in a secure file at work or in your safe deposit box.

Scanning is even better, so you’ll be able to save your address book to your computer. Save an additional copy onto a portable hard drive or flash drive and place it along with your other vital documents in a safe deposit box.  That way you’ll be able to access your contacts in case your home is inaccessible in an emergency.

Have Fun Getting Your Stuff Together!

Back It Up

I don’t know about you, but the most important keepsakes in our house are our old family photos, followed closely by our home movies and music. But grabbing piles of photo albums and all your picture frames off the walls is pretty hard to do when you’re running out the door! With Back It Up, you’ll learn quick, easy steps to back up your print/digital photos, home movies, music (including vinyl & cassettes) and save them in multiple, disaster proof locations. Paperback Or Instant Download

Keep Everything You Love Safe | The Book Inspired By The Blog

Keep Everything You Love Safe, is filled with quick, easy, 5 minute steps you can take right now, to get everything that’s important to you organized, safe, sound and accessible. Each section covers a different area, from backing up and fixing family photos, home movies and music, to vital documents, medical and financial information and even getting your digital life in order. Paperback Or Instant Download

Keep The Stuff You Love Safe

How To Save Your Treasured Voice Mail Messages

How To Save Your Home Movies And Videos

How To Archive Your Digital Photos

How To Archive Your Print Photos

How To Make A Home Inventory

How To Get Your Financial Life In Order

How To Preserve Your Family History

How To Back Up Your Facebook Friends List

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Mobile Command Center

How To Backup Your Music, MP3s And Vinyl Albums

How To Access Your Money No Matter Where You Are

How To Keep Your Medical History At Your Fingertips

Updated On 9/28/21

It’s more important than EVER to have all of the medical information about the people you love, at your fingertips.

When a patient is brought in the emergency room unconscious, aside from obvious injuries, the doctors caring for him basically have no information about their patient.  They have no idea what he might be allergic to, what medications he’s taking or the surgery he had the month before. 

And when you add in the COVID pandemic and the fact that you might not even be able to set foot in the hospital to be with someone you love?

It’s more important than EVER to have all of the medical information about the people you love, at your fingertips.

Here’s what to do to keep YOUR family safe.

Elaine Sullivan was an active seventy-one year old living on her own in Chicago.  One day while getting ready to take a bath, she slipped and fell, striking her head and mouth on the side of the tub.  Her neighbors realized they hadn’t seen her all day and called the paramedics, who went in and found her, conscious, but unable to speak.

Elaine had previously been a patient at the hospital she was taken to, she had Medicare and Medicare Advantage insurance and everything she needed.  Or so she thought.  Even though she was stable, injuries to her mouth made her unable to speak, so she was unable to speak for herself.  Over the next few days, after a series of serious medical errors and a critical drug interaction, her condition worsened.

Elaine Sullivan was my grandma. 

Despite the fact that the hospital had my mother’s and my contact information for our home in Los Angeles, the hospital didn’t even try to call us for 6 1/2 days.  By the time they did, Grandma was in critical condition from a lack of the most basic care.  She was supposed to be on vacation at the time so we weren’t expecting to hear from her.  By the time they finally called us, we had no time to get to her before she passed away, unnecessarily and alone. 

As we found out the hard way, some hospitals don’t make calling your next of kin their priority. 

Even though most hospitals try to find an unconscious patient’s emergency contacts, sometimes they get so busy or are so understaffed that they don’t make that call as quickly as they should.

What caused Grandma’s death?  A simple drug interaction that would have easily been prevented with one phone call to us.

And recent natural disasters and COVID-19 have only amplified the need to get a patient’s identification, medical history and emergency contact information to the physicians treating him as quickly as humanly possible.

Your Emergency Medical Information 

Emergencies can rattle the best of us, and the phone number or facts you know by heart are the very ones that could elude you when you need them most!

You just can’t leave information that important up to your memory.  So let’s get it down on paper, where it belongs.

1 What Information Am I Going To Need?

Grab a pencil and paper and jot down the types of medical information you have for each member of the family.

This includes your family’s medical history, the names of everyone’s physicians, specialists, dentists, optometrists and other health care providers and their current and past prescriptions. 

2 The Most Important Things Are…

Close your eyes for a moment & imagine that you’re sitting in the ER with everyone in your house.  One by one, imagine that your spouse, each child or your parent has an injury, like a broken arm, or needs emergency surgery.

The doctor – someone who doesn’t know you or your family’s unique medical or emotional needs – walks through the door.

What does this doctor need to know about them?  

Jot down all of the things that just went through your mind.  Old injuries, allergies, surgeries, anything you think is important.

3 Locate and Gather All The Information You Have

Using those notes and the list you completed in Step 1, locate and gather all of the medical information you have at home, along with your address book or contact information for physicians as well as the people you’ll be using for emergency contacts.

4 Create Your Medical Information Forms

Grab a copy of our Medical History Form, or if you have a copy of our book “Write It Down” you’ll find a copy in the back of the book.

Create one for each adult and child in your family, adding all of the information you’ve located.

5 Choosing Your Emergency Contacts

Choose and name at least 3 emergency contacts for each person, including yourself.

Main Emergency Contact:  If you are married, include your spouse on your form and yourself on your spouse’s form.  For your children, this would be you and your spouse.

2nd Contact: should be a nearby relative or good friend who you would trust enough to make informed choices on your behalf, if necessary.

3rd Contact: should be an out of town/out of state relative or friend.

6 Anything Else To Add?

Is there any other information you need, to deal with a medical emergency while evacuated or away from home?  If so, scan or make copies of that information and place it in the same computer folder as your completed medical history forms.

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to put ICE (In Case Of Emergency) Contacts in your and your family’s smartphones along with a copy or link to your medical history forms.  That way if you ever need quick access to a family member’s medical history you’ll have it right at your fingertips.  You’ll find instructions on creating ICE Contacts on an iPhone and on a Galaxy/Android, right here on the blog.

7 Now For Safekeeping…

Print, scan or make three copies of the form you just completed, along with the documents or other materials you need and store them in at least three secure, damage-proof locations.   That way if one or two of the locations are inaccessible, you’ll still be able to grab the information you need.

If you’ve decided to print out your forms and medical documents on paper, you can place them:

• In a safe deposit box or water/fireproof safe in your own city.

• In your watertight Plastic Evacuation Bin. 

• With your emergency contacts or with relatives in the city where you’ll be evacuating.

• In your file cabinet at work/office.  If your spouse, child or relative is injured while you’re at work, you can grab the medical information from your files and take it to the emergency room.

Once you save your forms and medical documents onto your computer, you can also:

• Save the forms to your smartphone and/or your password-protected Dropbox, iCloud or OneDrive so that if a member of your family is ever rushed to the emergency room, you can send the form directly to the emergency physician, so that they’ll have a medical history immediately, before you even arrive at the hospital.

• Save them to a flash drive or portable hard drive, and take them with you during evacuation on a key ring or in your evacuation bin.

One important note:  DO NOT put your or your family’s social security numbers in your list of vital information or in online files or folders, no matter how secure they are.  If you have to have those numbers with you (and haven’t memorized them), copy or scan the originals and place them in a secure safe deposit box instead.

High Tech Toys

Here are the coolest ways we can find to keep everyone you love safe and connected.  Smart phones, smart watches, smart flash drives that beam data where you need it and a car accessory that diagnoses your engine on the go.  You’re welcome.

Anker PowerConf Bluetooth Speakerphone

Apple Air Pods

Apple Watch Series 3  

Apple/iTunes Gift Card

Autobrain GPS Tracker for Vehicles

Iridium Extreme Satellite Phone  

Iridium GO! Satellite Phone Wi-Fi Hotspot

BlueCosmo Inmarsat IsatPhone

Samsung Galaxy Note 20

Samsung Gear Fit2 Smartwatch Large, Black

SanDisk 32GB iXpand Flash Drive for iPhone and iPad

Galaxy Fold Z2

IPhone 12 Pro Max

IPhone SE

IPod Touch

Jitterbug Flip Phone

The Ridge Slim RFID Front Pocket Wallet

Tulips In The Breeze Smartphone Case

Red Parrot Smartphone Case

The COVID pandemic has created a new list of toys that people can’t do without — including some very cool high-tech solutions to unexpected challenges.  Like staying healthy and working from home!  Here are some of our favorites.

Cubii Pro Seated Under Desk Elliptical Machine

I’m Smiling On The Inside Face Masks

iHealth No-Touch Forehead Thermometer

iProvèn Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor

KODAK Luma 150 Pocket Projector

No-Touch Door Opener, Button Pusher Tool

Owlet Smart Sock 2 Baby Monitor

PhoneSoap 3 UV Smartphone Sanitizer

Sony Tie-Clip-Style Omnidirectional Microphone

Total Gym APEX G5 Total Body Strength Training

Zacurate Fingertip Pulse Oximeter

For a book’s worth of tips and tools on getting your stuff written down, backed up and together, pick up a copy of our book “Write It Down” in paperback or via instant download.

Have Fun Getting Your Stuff Together!

At Your Fingertips | Make Your Smartphone Even Smarter

What if I told you, there was something you have with you right now, that can give you the support, information & ability you need to keep everyone and everything you love safe and sound, PLUS the power to gather your family in seconds no matter where they are. What is it? It’s your smartphone! At Your Fingertips is an easy to read, easy to use guide that turns your smartphone into your very own life preserver. Paperback Or Instant Download

Keep Everything You Love Safe | The Book Inspired By The Blog

Keep Everything You Love Safe, is filled with quick, easy, 5 minute steps you can take right now, to get everything that’s important to you organized, safe, sound and accessible. Each section covers a different area, from backing up and fixing family photos, home movies and music, to vital documents, medical and financial information and even getting your digital life in order. Paperback Or Instant Download

Keep The Stuff You Love Safe

How To Save Your Treasured Voice Mail Messages

How To Save Your Home Movies And Videos

How To Archive Your Digital Photos

How To Archive Your Print Photos

How To Make A Home Inventory

How To Get Your Financial Life In Order

How To Preserve Your Family History

How To Back Up Your Facebook Friends List

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Mobile Command Center

How To Backup Your Music, MP3s And Vinyl Albums

How To Access Your Money No Matter Where You Are

As Amazon Associates we earn commissions from qualifying purchases made from product links.

How To Save Your Home Movies And Videos

Updated 9/28/21

Do Your Home Movies Have An Expiration Date? 

Those old graduation films, your wedding video, your baby’s first steps.  All of those old videos, whether video, beta, mini DV or Super 8 – have a shelf life and it’s not as long as you thinhttps://amzn.to/2Onf2mUk.  

Just ask HGTV’s Lisa LaPorta.  When we interviewed her for our book Get Your Stuff Together, she told me about the day she slid her beloved high school videos into the VCR and they were absolutely gone.  Not just beige, or a little hard to hear, but completely and absolutely degraded to the point where those movies could no longer be watched.

How do you keep the same thing from happening to your movies and videos?  Glad you asked…

Before we start backing up your current movies and videos, here are a few tips on safeguarding all the videos you’ll be taking in the future.

Do you regularly take videos with your Smartphone? 

If you do, how often do you download them to your computer for printing or safekeeping?  Everyone should get into the habit of downloading their new pictures and videos every few days.  Dropbox is a great tool for this.  It’s a free application/web based file box that syncs up the photos and documents on your smartphone or tablet with your computer.   All you have to do is set up and download their app on your phone, tablet or iPod Touch.  Then save your new photos to your Dropbox folder and they’ll be waiting for you at home on your computer.   In fact most of the newer generation Wi-Fi video cameras, or cameras with an ez Share WiFi SD Card smart memory card do the same thing.

The Truth About Videos…

Videos just aren’t like other keepsakes.  With photos, MP3s or even important documents, we can just throw them onto a computer or a portable hard drive and back them up or take them with us in an emergency.  The videos that we’ve taken the last five or ten years with a digital video camera are easy to archive.  But the videos that we treasure the most are usually on videocassettes or worse, 8mm film.  Try taking those with you in an evacuation!   If those one-of-a-kind family movies on video cassette are destroyed, they’re gone forever.

And that’s not the only problem. 

With JVC, Sony, Panasonic and other video cameras and smartphones as inexpensive and easy to use as they are today, chances are that you have more videos of you, your family and friends, and the special moments of your life than ever before. 

But if you’re like most people, all of those videos are sitting on your computer, in a bunch of different places.  Or worse, you have 10 or 20 of them sitting on your video camera, just waiting to be accidentally overwritten.  Whether digital, on videocassette or film, all it takes is one fire, flood, fried hard drive, or hacked You Tube account and all of those memories are gone, along with a huge piece of your family’s history.

One other thing that you need to think about is the fact that videos and even film don’t last forever.  The latest statistic is that videos degrade in just eight or ten years.  And by degrade, I don’t mean that they get a little faded.  Videos lose their sound and can become garbled to the point that you can’t even watch them anymore.  Not what you want when you pop in that wedding video or the tape of your baby’s first steps.

Film, like Super 8 or 8mm reels, lasts longer (30 to 50 years), but it’s much harder to watch unless you have a projector and is harder to transfer to DVD for safekeeping.  But don’t worry, we’ve got some great tips on easy ways to preserve both film and video in the Take Action steps below.

Your goal for this section is to make all of your treasured videos and films completely accessible to you during a disaster, emergency evacuation, computer or Internet meltdown.

Just follow the steps below to locate all of your important videos, copy them and store them in at least three secure, damage-proof locations.

Take Action! 

1. You Can’t Archive Them If You Can’t Find Them…

Grab a pencil and paper and jot down the types of videos you want to secure, their format (digital file/format, standard video cassette, DVD or special sized video cassette) and their current location.

Using the list you just compiled, locate and gather all of the videos that you want to secure and set them aside for a moment.

2. Any Videos Lurking On Your Hard Drive?

Do you have any home videos on your computer?

Yes?  Then let’s start with them.  And while you’re at it, grab your video camera  and cell phone so you can download any videos that are still there.

• Create one new folder on your computer desktop and name it Backup Videos (dd/mm/yy) with today’s date.

• Locate all of the digital videos that you want to keep safe.  Leave the original files where they are on your computer, copying each one into  the new Backup folder.

• Instead of taking the time to choose which videos you want to keep safe and which you don’t really care about, it’s much easier just to copy them all for right now and back them all up.  Then  some time when you have nothing better to do, you can come back and sort through them.

3. Now for the Super 8 & Videocassettes

Now it’s time to deal with your 8mm or Super 8 films and video cassettes. Take a few moments to gather them and separate them into two different piles.

In Pile 1, place any videos that you want to copy and save in a digital format.

In Pile 2, place videos that you:

• Already have in digital format and could easily recopy if the one you’re holding were harmed or destroyed.

• Have numerous other copies of the video in other locations.  (Check to make sure that this is actually so before you decide not to copy them)

• Simply don’t care enough about to keep it disaster safe.

• Go ahead and put the videos in the second pile back where you found them.

4. The Best Way To Copy Videocassettes

The only way to archive your films and videos is to copy or transfer them into a digital format and save them to your computer or onto a DVD.  There are a few great ways to do this yourself or you can have a professional do it.

If your movies are on videocassette , ION makes a great little device called a ClearClick Video to Digital Converter for your PC or Mac.  It’s a small device — you plug one end into your computer and the other end into your VCR and it saves your videos in digital format on your computer.  The Magnavox VHS to DVD Combo Recorder is also a wonderful way to rerecord a VHS tape onto a DVD directly.

5. What About My Super 8 Movies?

If you have reels of 8mm & Super 8 films lying around, you’ll need to have them transferred to digital format professionally.

There’s a wonderful company called iMemories that helped us digitize our  movies.  They’ll even send you a safe ship kit equipped with a GPS locator to pinpoint your movies’ exact location, every step of the way.  And they do an incredible job of transferring film, videotapes, audio files and photos .  The best part is that once they’re completed, you can share them with your friends and relatives in your own private online theater.

6.  Where and how you decide to secure and store your videos is up to you.  But here are a few ideas:

Once your videos are digital, you can place them:

• On a portable hard drive or on a DVD, and take them with you during evacuation on a key ring or in your plastic evacuation bin.

• On a flash drive or portable hard drive, in a safe deposit box or water/fireproof safe in your own city.

• On a flash drive or portable hard drive, in a safe deposit box, water/fireproof safe, or with relatives in the city where you’ll be evacuating.

• In a password-protected online file repository or on the file directory of your family’s personal web site.  This way you can retrieve them from any Internet-enabled computer.

• Upload them to your iMemories account.  This way they’re not only safe, but you can share with family and friends.

• On You Tube or another internet video site.  This is great place to save an extra copy of your videos. Just be sure to uncheck the public viewing option or password protect the videos for your and your family’s eyes only.  But this really shouldn’t be a long term solution, or your only solution.  As much as we all love Internet sharing sites, you actually have no control over them.  If the company were to go out of business, or if their servers were to crash, you could lose all of your data without any warning.

• And while we’re on the subject of saving all of your important videos for decades to come, the next time you’re in the market for a new video camera or a digital camera that shoots video, make sure that you choose one with built in Wi-Fi, that uploads all of your new videos directly to your PC, laptop, iCloud, Dropbox or other online filing repository.   

High Tech Toys

Here are some of our favorite high-tech tools and toys to help you get all of your favorite photos, music, home videos, movies – and anything else that can be stored digitally – backed up, stored and accessible.  Wherever you are.  Whatever is going on around you.  24/7. 

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020

Anker PowerCore 5000 Portable Charger

Axis Self-Powered Safety Hub

Canon PowerShot Wi-Fi Enabled ELPH 190 Digital Camera

ClearClick Video to Digital Converter

Epson Perfection V600 Photo, Film, & Document Scanner

ez Share WiFi SD Card

Fireproof Document Bags

Sentry Fireproof/Waterproof  Lateral File Cabinet

SentrySafe Fireproof and Waterproof Safe

HP Photo Printer All-in-One Wireless Envy 7120

ION Audio Premier LP Turntable Vinyl Record Player

Kodak P570 Personal Photo Scanner

Magnavox VHS to DVD Combo Recorder

Reshow Cassette Player  MP3 Converter

Rocketbook Smart Reusable Notebook

SanDisk 32GB Connect Wireless Stick Flash Drive

SanDisk 32GB iXpand Flash Drive for iPhone and iPad

Sony 4K HD Video Camcorder

Sony HX400V Compact Digital Camera

VuPoint Handheld Magic Wand Portable Scanner

The COVID pandemic has created a new list of toys that people can’t do without — including some very cool high-tech solutions to unexpected challenges.  Like staying healthy and working from home!  Here are some of our favorites.

Cubii Pro Seated Under Desk Elliptical Machine

I’m Smiling On The Inside Face Masks

iHealth No-Touch Forehead Thermometer

iProvèn Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor

KODAK Luma 150 Pocket Projector

No-Touch Door Opener, Button Pusher Tool

Owlet Smart Sock 2 Baby Monitor

PhoneSoap 3 UV Smartphone Sanitizer

Sony Tie-Clip-Style Omnidirectional Microphone

Total Gym APEX G5 Total Body Strength Training

Zacurate Fingertip Pulse Oximeter

For a book’s worth of tips and tools on getting your stuff organized, backed up and together, pick up a copy of our books “Back It Up” and “Write It Down” in paperback or via instant download.

Have Fun Getting Your Stuff Together!

 

Keep Everything You Love Safe | The Book Inspired By The Blog

Keep Everything You Love Safe, is filled with quick, easy, 5 minute steps you can take right now, to get everything that’s important to you organized, safe, sound and accessible. Each section covers a different area, from backing up and fixing family photos, home movies and music, to vital documents, medical and financial information and even getting your digital life in order. Paperback Or Instant Download

 

Back It Up

I don’t know about you, but the most important keepsakes in our house are our old family photos, followed closely by our home movies and music. But grabbing piles of photo albums and all your picture frames off the walls is pretty hard to do when you’re running out the door! With Back It Up, you’ll learn quick, easy steps to back up your print/digital photos, home movies, music (including vinyl & cassettes) and save them in multiple, disaster proof locations. Paperback Or Instant Download

 

Keep The Stuff You Love Safe

How To Save Your Treasured Voice Mail Messages

How To Save Your Home Movies And Videos

How To Archive Your Digital Photos

How To Archive Your Print Photos

How To Make A Home Inventory

How To Get Your Financial Life In Order

How To Preserve Your Family History

How To Back Up Your Facebook Friends List

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Mobile Command Center

How To Backup Your Music, MP3s And Vinyl Albums

How To Access Your Money No Matter Where You Are

As Amazon Associates we earn commissions from qualifying purchases made from product links.

 

How To Save Your Vinyl Albums & Cassettes Onto Your Computer

Updated 9/28/2021

How Much is Your Music Collection Worth? 

An even better question is, how much is it worth to you? 

People would rather part with their high school yearbooks than their music. 

It’s special.  Intensely personal.  Truly the soundtrack to our lives. 

That’s why it’s so important to copy and archive your music the RIGHT way. 

The other day I walked into a store and wasn’t paying much attention to anything but finding the item I had stopped in for.  All of a sudden a song began to play on the store’s radio.  I hadn’t even heard what was playing before, but now, my entire mood changed.  It was “Hooked On A Feeling”, which will be forever known as the Dancing Baby song from “Ally McBeal”.  Not only did the music have my attention, but I immediately got a picture of that ridiculous dancing baby in my mind and had a huge smile on my face.  So did half of the people in the store. What is it about music that can bring you such immediate, overwhelming emotions?  It  transports you the place you were when you first heard it or always listened to that song. 

And it’s not just the Ooogachucka of the dancing baby, but it’s so many songs, like the theme from the Dancing Waters show at Disneyland Hotel, where we went so many evenings when I was growing up in Orange County.

The hard part about protecting the music that we’ve amassed over the years isn’t collecting it, it’s making sure that our soundtracks are there for us to listen to and enjoy for years to come. 

Just think about the types of music that you probably have in your home right now.  You probably have MP3s that you’ve downloaded from iTunes or other sites for your iPod or MP3 player.  Then, there’s your collection of CDs that you did or did not get around to ripping onto your computer and turning into MP3s.  If you’re over 30, you probably have quite a few cassettes hanging around and you probably even have some vinyl albums or 8 tracks as well that are either yours or have been handed down to you by family members.

Except for the MP3s and, with a little work, the CDs, none of those things are exactly on speaking terms with your computer.  And if you’re like most people, the MP3s are probably all over your computer, in a bunch of different folders.  That doesn’t include the music you’ve downloaded to your phone or to your tablet that you haven’t gotten around to backing up onto your PC or Mac.   And chances are, you and your family members have spent quite a lot of money on those downloaded songs, those CDs, cassettes and whatever else you have your music on.

Losing them, whether physically in a fire or flood, or digitally on a crashed cellphone or computer, would be a nightmare.   People put so much money into their music collections, but very few ever think to back it up!

So let’s gather that music collection of yours and back it up.  Not only will you be able to find your songs when you want them, but you’ll finally be able to hear that amazing jazz solo you have on vinyl on your iPhone or Samsung Galaxy!

Take Action! 

1. Here CDs, Here Cassettes.   Where Are Your Albums?

Grab a pencil and paper and jot down the types of music you have that you want to secure and their current location.

Using the list you just compiled, locate and gather all of the CDs, cassettes and vinyl albums that you want to secure and set them aside for a moment.

2. What About The Music That’s Already Digital?

Do you have MP3 or other digital music files?

First grab your MP3 player, your cell phone, your iPad or tablets and make sure all of those music files are downloaded to your computer desktop now.

• Create one new folder on your computer desktop and name it “Backup Music (dd/mm/yy)” with today’s date.

• Locate all of the digital music on your hard drive that you want to keep safe.  Leave the original files where they are on your computer, but copy each one and place the copies in that new Backup folder.

3. Time To Deal With The Albums & CDs…

Although all of your music is important, some means more to you than others.  Take a few moments to look at your CDs, cassettes and vinyl albums, and separate them into two different piles.

• In the first pile, place music that you’ll need to copy and save in a digital format, to keep them safe.

• In the second pile, place music that you:

• Already have in digital format and could easily find if the one you’re holding was harmed or destroyed.

• Have numerous other copies of the music in other locations.  (be sure that this is actually so before you decide not to copy them)

• Simply don’t care enough about to keep it disaster safe.

• You can go ahead and put the music in the second pile away.

4. Convert Your CDs to MP3s

You can convert CDs right on your computer, using your computer’s music software.  For a PC, that would be Windows Media Player.  Just put the CD into your computer and the software will automatically pop up.  Follow the instructions to “rip” your CD.

When your songs are ripped, take your CD out and save the new MP3 files to the music folder on your computer.  We’ll back those up to keep them safe in a few minutes.  But don’t forget to add those new songs to your phone iPad or MP3 player!

5. Convert Your Cassettes & Albums to MP3s

Here are a few easy ways we’ve found to convert your cassettes or albums to MP3s.

There are several vinyl album to MP3 recorders available including the ION Audio Premier LP Turntable Vinyl Record Player.  The nice thing about that one is that it converts cassettes and vinyl to CD or to MP3s.  And if you only have cassettes to convert, there is the Reshow Cassette Player  MP3 Converter.

Once you’ve saved copies of your cassettes and vinyl albums, save them to the regular music folder on your computer, to your new backup folder and don’t forget to put your favorites on your smartphone or MP3 player.

And while you’re at it, how about helping mom, dad, grandma or grandpa preserve their old albums while you’re at it.  An MP3 player or new iPhone X or Samsung Galaxy full of their favorite songs would make a GREAT gift!

6. Save Them To Your Computer

Download the new MP3 files to your computer desktop, placing them in a brand new folder.  When you’re finished, make one copy of that complete folder.  Place the original folder in with the other digital music files on your computer.  Then place the copy of the folder into the backup folder you created earlier.

If you don’t have access to a converter or don’t own a computer, then have a relative or friend convert them and store them for you. 

And while you’re at it, how about helping mom, dad, grandma or grandpa preserve their old albums.  A brand new smartphone or MP3 player full of their favorite albums would make a GREAT gift!

7. And Then Archive The Back Up Copies

Since we’ve been talking about preserving your music, once you’ve got it all backed up, it only makes sense to keep it safe and sound. 

So save a copy of your Backup Music folder onto a flash drive or a portable hard drive and place it in at least two secure, damage-proof locations, away from home for safekeeping. 

Here are a few suggestions on places to put it:

• In a watertight Plastic Evacuation Bin. 

• In a safe deposit box in your own city.

• In a water/fireproof safe in your own city.

• In a safe deposit in a pre-determined evacuation location

• In a password protected file on Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive or family web site.

High Tech Toys

Here are some of our favorite high-tech tools and toys to help you get all of your favorite photos, music, home videos, movies – and anything else that can be stored digitally – backed up, stored and accessible.  Wherever you are.  Whatever is going on around you.  24/7. 

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020

Anker PowerCore 5000 Portable Charger

Axis Self-Powered Safety Hub

Canon PowerShot Wi-Fi Enabled ELPH 190 Digital Camera

ClearClick Video to Digital Converter

Epson Perfection V600 Photo, Film, & Document Scanner

ez Share WiFi SD Card

Fireproof Document Bags

Sentry Fireproof/Waterproof  Lateral File Cabinet

SentrySafe Fireproof and Waterproof Safe

HP Photo Printer All-in-One Wireless Envy 7120

ION Audio Premier LP Turntable Vinyl Record Player

Kodak P570 Personal Photo Scanner

Magnavox VHS to DVD Combo Recorder

Reshow Cassette Player  MP3 Converter

Rocketbook Smart Reusable Notebook

SanDisk 32GB Connect Wireless Stick Flash Drive

SanDisk 32GB iXpand Flash Drive for iPhone and iPad

Sony 4K HD Video Camcorder

Sony HX400V Compact Digital Camera

VuPoint Handheld Magic Wand Portable Scanner

The COVID pandemic has created a new list of toys that people can’t do without — including some very cool high-tech solutions to unexpected challenges.  Like staying healthy and working from home!  Here are some of our favorites.

Cubii Pro Seated Under Desk Elliptical Machine

I’m Smiling On The Inside Face Masks

iHealth No-Touch Forehead Thermometer

iProvèn Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor

KODAK Luma 150 Pocket Projector

No-Touch Door Opener, Button Pusher Tool

Owlet Smart Sock 2 Baby Monitor

PhoneSoap 3 UV Smartphone Sanitizer

Sony Tie-Clip-Style Omnidirectional Microphone

Total Gym APEX G5 Total Body Strength Training

Zacurate Fingertip Pulse Oximeter

For a book’s worth of tips and tools on getting your stuff organized, backed up and together, pick up a copy of our books “Back It Up” and “Write It Down” in paperback or via instant download.

Have Fun Getting Your Stuff Together!

Keep Everything You Love Safe | The Book Inspired By The Blog

Keep Everything You Love Safe, is filled with quick, easy, 5 minute steps you can take right now, to get everything that’s important to you organized, safe, sound and accessible. Each section covers a different area, from backing up and fixing family photos, home movies and music, to vital documents, medical and financial information and even getting your digital life in order. Paperback Or Instant Download

 

Back It Up

I don’t know about you, but the most important keepsakes in our house are our old family photos, followed closely by our home movies and music. But grabbing piles of photo albums and all your picture frames off the walls is pretty hard to do when you’re running out the door! With Back It Up, you’ll learn quick, easy steps to back up your print/digital photos, home movies, music (including vinyl & cassettes) and save them in multiple, disaster proof locations. Paperback Or Instant Download

 

Keep The Stuff You Love Safe

How To Save Your Treasured Voice Mail Messages

How To Save Your Home Movies And Videos

How To Archive Your Digital Photos

How To Archive Your Print Photos

How To Make A Home Inventory

How To Get Your Financial Life In Order

How To Preserve Your Family History

How To Back Up Your Facebook Friends List

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Mobile Command Center

How To Backup Your Music, MP3s And Vinyl Albums

How To Access Your Money No Matter Where You Are

How To Back Up Your Data

Updated 3/19/21

Many people think that, because they have all of their documents, photos, videos, recipes, contacts and other data stored on their computer hard drive, those files are safe. 

And for the most part, they’re right.  Putting your files on a computer is safer than having them in a dusty old file cabinet.  And on a computer, you can easily search for and find documents in seconds. But, don’t forget that a computer is very much like that file cabinet.  Instead of being vulnerable to enemies like moths and dust, hard drives can stop working, and documents can become corrupted or accidentally deleted.  So what can you do?  The answer is simple.  Back up your files in other places like a portable hard drive or Cloud account.  Often.

And by often, we mean at least once a month.  If you add new files or edit old files frequently, then do your backup once a week.  

When you think about backing up all of the data that you currently have on your computer, your smartphones, tablets, netbooks and any other devices, how do you picture that data?  Do you break it up into two groups – the data you have to archive and keep safe and the data that you don’t really care about?  Or do you want to keep everything you have safe?

You should analyze all of your files and decide which ones need to be backed up and archived to ensure that the files and documents that are important to you – like your photos, music collection and Ready In 10 Grab it and Go Forms, are safe, sound and at your fingertips no matter what happens.

Or you can simply decide that all of your files are important.  If not, why would you have saved them in the first place?  Portable hard drives are so inexpensive, it makes more sense and takes less time just to do a complete backup of your computer to one or two portable hard drives and place each of those hard drives in a different location.  That way, if your home or your area is affected by a destructive disaster, all of your files will be patiently waiting for you, at another location.

Once you have all of the files on your computer backed up, consider putting your most vital documents, or the ones that mean the most to you, on a flash drive, so that you can have them at your fingertips whenever you need them.  You might choose your favorite family photos, music files, videos, vital documents – anything that you want to keep near you in an emergency or that you want immediately accessible to you, without having to run to the safe deposit box or wait until you reach your evacuation location.  One of the best flash drives we’ve found is Kingston’s urDrive.  It’s the newest 8 GB USB drive from their DataTraveler line.  It’s tiny, has a hole in it to fit on a keychain and comes with apps and a browser that you can use right from the drive.  It’s pretty amazing and is designed to take all the bumps and nicks that you can dish out, all the while keeping your data safe and secure.

Take Action! 

1. First You Have To Find It..

Grab a pencil and paper and jot down the data you currently have on your computer, removable disks or CDs, that you either need access  to in a disaster or emergency, or that you absolutely cannot replace if lost or destroyed.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Digital Photos

• Downloaded Music Files

• Videos

• Contacts

• Work/Vital Documents

• Financial Documents/Files

• Tax Documents/Files

• Presentations

• Books you’ve purchased or downloaded

• Articles or Papers that you have authored

• Anything else you or your family have created that you do not want to lose.

2. Here’s How To Back It Up

Using the list you just compiled, locate the data that you want to safeguard on your computer.

Create a new folder on your computer desktop and name it “Backup Data (dd/mm/yy),” with today’s date.

Leaving the original files where they are on your computer, copy all of the data you wish to back up and place the copies in that new Backup Folder.

The simplest way to copy a large amount of files on a PC is to:

• Highlight the files you wish to copy either by clicking on them while holding down the shift key, or choosing them with your mouse.

• Hold down the CTRL key + the letter C at the same time to copy them.

• Open the Backup folder, click your mouse inside the folder and hold down the CTRL key + the letter V to paste all of the files inside of the new folder.

The simplest way to copy a large amount of files on a Mac is to:

• Hold down the Option Key or Alt, and click on the file that you want to move, then drag it and drop it in its new location.  Double check to make sure that there is a copy of the file in the old and the new locations.

3. The Best Place To Put The Backed Up Data Is…

Where and how you decide to secure and store your information is up to you.  But here are a few ideas:

• Place files on a flash drive or portable hard drive, that you can take with during evacuation on a key ring or in your evacuation bin.

• Place files on a flash drive or portable hard drive, that’s located in a safe deposit box or water/fireproof safe in your own city.

• Place the flash drive or portable hard drive, that’s located in a safe deposit box, water/fireproof safe, or with relatives in the city where you’ll be evacuating.

• Place files on a files on a password-protected online file repository, in the Cloud or even the file directory of your family’s personal web site.  This way if you need a copy of your data quickly, you can retrieve it from any Internet-enabled computer.

4. One Important Thing To Remember

DO NOT put your or your family’s social security numbers in your list of vital information or in online files or folders, no matter how secure they are.

If you have to have those numbers with you (and haven’t memorized them), copy or scan the originals and place them in a secure safe deposit box instead.

Have Fun Getting Your Stuff Together!

Keep Everything You Love Safe | The Book Inspired By The Blog

Keep Everything You Love Safe, is filled with quick, easy, 5 minute steps you can take right now, to get everything that’s important to you organized, safe, sound and accessible. Each section covers a different area, from backing up and fixing family photos, home movies and music, to vital documents, medical and financial information and even getting your digital life in order. Paperback Or Instant Download

How To Organize Your Digital Life

How To Organize Your Digital Life gives a place to record all of your passwords, account information and even emergency instructions, along with secure ways to access them remotely, putting your social media life and your business life exactly where it belongs. At your fingertips. Paperback Or Instant Download

Keep The Stuff You Love Safe

How To Save Your Treasured Voice Mail Messages

How To Save Your Home Movies And Videos

How To Archive Your Digital Photos

How To Archive Your Print Photos

How To Make A Home Inventory

How To Get Your Financial Life In Order

How To Preserve Your Family History

How To Back Up Your Facebook Friends List

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Mobile Command Center

How To Backup Your Music, MP3s And Vinyl Albums

How To Access Your Money No Matter Where You Are

How To Get Your Insurance Information Together

Updated 3/25/21

Insurance is one of those things you never think about until you need it – NOW! 

Here are some easy ways to keep your insurance numbers, contacts and information at your fingertips whenever and wherever you need it.

Unless you’re purchasing a new insurance policy, the only time you think about your card, policy number or the name of your agent is when you need file a claim or take yourself or your kid to the emergency room.   That means the only time you think about your insurance is when you’re in crisis mode and when you’re the least likely to remember where you put it.  The good news is that your Financial & Insurance Information Sheet is just sitting there, waiting to absorb all of your insurance information and keep it safe for you until you need it.  Download a copy of the form or if you have our book Get Your Stuff Together, you’ll find a copy in the back of the book.  Let’s go over the type of information that you need to have to deal with most normal insurance situations.

Medical Insurance Information

For medical insurance, all of the information your hospital or your doctors needs is right on the card.  When you hand that card to your friendly hospital admission clerk, your work is done, and you can get back to the business of getting the medical treatment you need.

Instead of keeping your medical insurance cards in your wallet, where they can become lost or stolen, keep them at home in a safe place that you can easily reach.  If you have different cards for different family members, keep them together so you’re not running all over the house to find the one card you need for a midnight trip to the emergency room.

Take the time to scan your insurance cards or make copies of them and save them to a secure online file, password protected family web site, or a safe deposit box.  That way if you need to send a copy of an insurance card to the emergency room where a loved one has been taken, you can simply retrieve it and email it, without even having to stop at home on the way to the hospital.

Caution: if your insurance company puts your social security number on the card, like they do for a large percentage of Medicare patients, do not take the card out of the house unless you’re going directly to the doctor and directly back home.  Leaving that number in your wallet is just asking for trouble.

Home Owner’s Insurance

The good news is that, according to our friends at State Farm, you really don’t need to have that much information about your insurance policy to begin the claims process.  Whether you have a small claim (golf club through the window) or a large one (a tornado just struck the entire block), all you need to have at your fingertips is the name of your insurance company, the policy number and ideally the name and phone number of your agent.   Depending on your insurance agent, you might not even need that.  When we spoke with State Farm, we heard an incredible story of strength and commitment demonstrated by one agent in Joplin, Missouri. Right after the enormous tornado struck Joplin, devastating not only homes and businesses, one State Farm agent found himself without a home.   He was relieved to find his office still standing, so he decided that he would just have to live in his office until he was able to find housing.  Minutes after he walked in the door, his customers began walking in.  Dazed and now homeless, each customer needed more care and attention than he did.  They didn’t even have a place to lay their heads.  So the agent decided to open his office to any of his clients who needed a place to stay.  In the days that followed, he began the claims process with his clients, which wasn’t easy.  Joplin still didn’t have electricity, and between his own paperwork, his computer and his direct line to State Farm headquarters, the agent began piecing everything together, neighbor by neighbor, getting them and himself on the road to recovery.

That’s another great reason to have all of your insurance cards scanned/copied, along with your Grab It and Go Vital Information Form, detailing all of your policy numbers, agent’s names, contacts, emergency numbers and copies of any documentation, like proof of insurance, stored at home and in at least two other locations.

No matter what type of insurance coverage you have, that’s all you’ll need to fill out a police report or to get the ball rolling on repairs or restoration.

Gather all of the insurance information you have in the house for each member of your family and let’s get started.

Take Action! 

1. Calling All Insurance…

Our mission for this exercise is to gather all of the insurance information you have in the house for each member of your family.

First grab a pencil and paper and jot down the types of insurance you currently have.  This probably includes home owners or renters insurance, car insurance, life insurance, disability or long term health insurance and medical insurance.  Put aside your Medical Insurance information for now.  And when you’re ready to take care of it, be sure to read our Blog Post on Creating Your Medical History.

2. Grab Your Flashlight. This Might Get Ugly…

Using the list you just compiled, locate and gather all of the insurance cards and information and you can find for each type of insurance you, your spouse , your children and any other adults that are living in your home, currently have.

3. Document, Document, Document.

Let’s document the information that you’ve found.   Grab a copy of our Grab It & Go Financial Form, or if you have our book Get Your Stuff Together, you’ll find a copy in the back of the book.   Complete a copy of the form for each person, using all of the information you’ve located for each insurance policy.   Then save it or print it and put it to the side.

4. Ensuring You Found Everything That Is Insured

Do you have any other information, that you would need to demonstrate proof of insurance, or the current condition of your home or vehicles?

Scan or make copies of all of your insurance cards and place them in a special folder on your computer desktop.

Will you need a copy of the actual policy or certificate of insurance?  If so, include them along with your documents in the next step.

While we’re at it, we have something else you should check out.   Have you completed your home inventory  including photos or videos of your valued possessions?  If not, when you’re through document your insurance information, click on the link so that you can learn how to document the current condition of your home or car before the damage occurred.  Then once you’ve completed the inventory, you can note on this form where those photos and documents are located for easy retrieval, in case you ever have an insurance claim.

Have Fun Getting Your Stuff Together!

Keep Everything You Love Safe | The Book Inspired By The Blog

Keep Everything You Love Safe, is filled with quick, easy, 5 minute steps you can take right now, to get everything that’s important to you organized, safe, sound and accessible. Each section covers a different area, from backing up and fixing family photos, home movies and music, to vital documents, medical and financial information and even getting your digital life in order. Paperback Or Instant Download

How To Organize Your Digital Life

How To Organize Your Digital Life gives a place to record all of your passwords, account information and even emergency instructions, along with secure ways to access them remotely, putting your social media life and your business life exactly where it belongs. At your fingertips. Paperback Or Instant Download

Keep The Stuff You Love Safe

How To Save Your Treasured Voice Mail Messages

How To Save Your Home Movies And Videos

How To Archive Your Digital Photos

How To Archive Your Print Photos

How To Make A Home Inventory

How To Get Your Financial Life In Order

How To Preserve Your Family History

How To Back Up Your Facebook Friends List

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Mobile Command Center

How To Backup Your Music, MP3s And Vinyl Albums

How To Access Your Money No Matter Where You Are

How To Back Up Your Contacts

Let’s say your spouse or best friend decides to throw you a surprise party… 

If they opened up your contacts on your computer, would they find the current names and contact information for your friends and relatives?  Or would you end up with a room full of long forgotten former neighbors and all your friends from Camp Wannamochachino? That’s what I thought.   Which means that in an emergency, your spouse or best friend would have absolutely NO chance of locating the names of people they need to contact ASAP. So how about some quick tips on getting the contacts on your computer in pristine shape quickly and painlessly? Here are some simple ways to get them organized, backed up, usable and accessible.

Take Action! 

Here are a few simple ways to get your address book organized, backed up, useable and accessible.

1. Hunting Down Those Scraps of Paper

Grab all of those slips of paper, you’ve been keeping, with your friend’s updated phone numbers and emails.  And don’t forget the addresses you tore off the Christmas card envelopes & the notes at the bottom of your purse.  Now get over to your computer and start updating your contacts.

2. Two Second Updates

Outlook or other computer based contacts are the easiest to maintain – but only if you actually maintain them.  Every time you notice that a friend has updated information, take two seconds to update their entry in your contacts.

3. Or Once A Month

If you don’t have time for those two second updates, here’s a great way to get them all done.

• Create a new folder on your computer desktop named “Contacts”.

• Every time a friend sends you an email with updated contact info, or a new contact, save it and drop it into the folder.

• You can also simply create a Word document and save all those bits of information on that one page.

• Then on the day of your “appointment” make all the changes to your contacts, then delete the info in the folder or the entries on the Word document and start the month fresh.

4. Don’t Keep The Location To Yourself

Once your book is updated, tell your spouse, roommate or if you live alone, mother or best friend, where you keep your contacts, in case of emergency.  If it’s password protected, share that as well.

5. Talk Isn’t Always Cheap

Have a quick conversation with your spouse, best friend or parent about which people you would want them to notify if you were seriously injured.

You can also create a “notify” category in your contacts and put each person you’d want to notify of an accident or serious  illness, in that category.

That way all your spouse, friend or parent would have to do is sort by the notify category and would instantly have a list of people to notify.

And be sure to have the same conversation with your spouse and parents so that you know who to notify if the situation were reversed.

6. Now What Do I Do With It?

Back up your contacts!  If you’ve decided to make updates to your contacts once a month, then simply make a backup copy of your contacts the same day.

Depending on your software, export them or save them to a backup file just in case anything ever happens to your contact list.  While you’re at it, save an additional copy onto a portable hard drive or flash drive and put it in a safe deposit box with your other vital documents.  That way you’ll always have your contacts at your fingertips.

Want to download these instructions to use later?  Click Here to download the PDF version.

Have Fun Getting Your Stuff Together! We’ll talk later…

 

Buy Paperback Edition $24.99         Buy Downloadable Edition $8.00

More Amazing Things You Can Do In 5 Minutes Or Less

How To Set Up An ICE Contact On Your Smartphone

How To Create Your Family’s Evacuation Plan

How To Download and Back Up Your Digital Photos

How To Fill Out Your Kid’s Emergency Contact Card

Learn how to put an ICE Contact on every type of smartphone in just minutes with The ICE My Phone Kit! Paperback Edition $14.99   Buy now at Amazon.com  Downloadable PDF Edition $5.00 Buy Now  Read more about it
_________________________________________________

The Book Inspired By The Blog. The Backup Plan 3.0

The Backup Plan 3.0, is filled with quick, easy, 5 minute steps you can take right now, to get everything that’s important to you organized, safe, sound and accessible.  Each section covers a different area, from backing up and fixing family photos, home movies and music, to vital documents, medical and financial information and even getting your digital life in order.  This special Bonus Edition includes 7 downloadable Bonus Books.  Paperback Edition $24.99   Buy now at Amazon.com  Downloadable PDF Edition $8.00  Buy Now       Read more about it

I don’t know about you, but the most important keepsakes in our house are our old family photos, followed closely by our home movies and music.  The problem is, grabbing piles of photo albums and all of the picture frames off the walls is hard to do if you have to get out of the house quickly. With How To Back Up Your Photos, Videos and Music, you’ll learn quick, easy steps to back up your print/digital photos, home movies, cassettes, vinyl albums and archive them in multiple, disaster proof locations.     $12.95   Buy now at Amazon.com    Read more about it

Raise Money & Save Lives!  Free Customized Editions of our books make a great fundraiser for your organization, company, or an extra stream of income for you.  

Your Business Continuity Plan May Be Missing Something…  Like your employees, for instance?  If your city is struck by a tornado, earthquake or other disaster, it isn’t just your company that will be affected – so will your employees.  That’s why you need to make sure they’re as prepared for an emergency as YOU are.  Don’t worry! We’ve got you covered.  Read More About It

Like Us On Facebook

Follow Us On Twitter

Watch Our How-To Videos On YouTube

Join Us On Pinterest

Free Resources

How To Keep Your Breakable Keepsakes From Breaking

Updated 3/7/21

There once was a man who was so afraid of earthquakes that he did everything he possibly could to prepare for one. 

He had water, food, and first aid kits lining the walls of his ocean front home.  He had his bookcases and cabinets bolted to the wall.  Everyone in his home knew where to run and where to hide when “the big one” eventually hit.

Then one morning the big one came.  He and his family ran into the spots they had practiced, into doorways, under the heavy tables.  It seemed like an eternity before the rumbling stopped.  Everyone just looked at each other, scared but smiling.  They’d done it!  They were okay.  They had food, they had shelter – this wasn’t so bad.

The man rushed to the door followed by his family.  The sun was shining, and they were thrilled to be alive.  Then one of the kids heard a strange roar.  Seconds later they could all hear it.  And then they saw it.  A ten-foot wave was headed right at them.  They ran up the street, up the hill as fast as they could.  They made it to the top just in time to watch the water swallow up their neighborhood, their home and with it, all their supplies.  The man looked at his wife and said,  “That was strange.  I never saw it coming.”

The moral of the story?  Just because you’re ready for what you think might happen, it doesn’t mean you’re ready for something you would never expect in a million years.  Like the COVID-19 Pandemic.  Or an earthquake or even a tsunami.

So the next time you’re in your living room, take a moment to look around you.  How many keepsakes are there in your home that would be in jeopardy if you “didn’t see it coming”?

A friend of ours kept putting all of her keepsakes in her basement.  Even though she knew a basement probably wasn’t the best place to keep things like her wedding albums, her dress and her kids’ artwork that she treasured so much, Carol kept telling herself that she would get down there sometime soon and get everything organized so she could bring it back upstairs and into a safer place.  One night during a particularly bad thunderstorm, her shoes squished as she stepped down into a basement full of water.  Something floating by hit her leg.  As Carol reached down to get it, saw what it was and burst into tears.  It was her wedding album. 

Scott Haskins, noted art restorer and author of “How To Save Your Stuff From A Disaster,” stopped by to talk about the advice he has given his clients over the years to help the safeguard their art, historical items, glass and other collectibles.

Although Scott usually works with people to restore or secure their wall mounted fine art, he also consults with clients and museums to ensure that their collectibles will be secure in the event of an earthquake.   Here are a few of the tips that he shared.

• Prepare your collectibles and keepsakes ahead of time by creating an inventory of items that are emotionally, financially or historically valuable to you and your family, so that you know which items need to be secured.   Take photos of those valuables.  If you have any documentation on the items, such as ownership papers, authentication or appraisals copy them and place them with your home inventory.  And don’t forget to keep copies of the photos and documentation in another city as well as your own, for safekeeping in case of a regional emergency.   For tips on creating a list of valuables, see our section on How To Create Your Home Inventory.

• Remember that anchoring breakable items down so they don’t break during an earthquake, not only protects your collectibles from breakage, but it also protects you and your family AFTER the earthquake.  Broken items like crystal, glassware, collectibles, and ceramics can make it hazardous for you to get out of your home or to move around safely to get things back in order.

• Strap down tall furniture that can topple over.  Carol Burnett once told a story about the Northridge Earthquake.  She always slept on the same side of the bed – in fact she didn’t even bother turning down the other side.  The night of the quake, for some reason, she couldn’t sleep and tossed and turned so much that she ended up on the other side of the bed.  As the quake started to strike her home, an unanchored television set from the bookcase beside her bed flew out of the bookcase and landed right on the side of the bed where she normally would been lying.   Talk about a close call!  And all of it could have been prevented by simply strapping her TV to the bookcase and anchoring the bookcase to the wall.

• Consider getting earthquake insurance.  If you live in earthquake country, you definitely need it.  However, this past year, don’t forget that earthquakes struck in the Midwest and along the East Coast.  So consider it even if you don’t live in “earthquake country”.  Earthquake insurance can be a relatively cheap add on to your policy.

• Anchor down collectibles on shelves that can fly around and cause damage.  There is a surprisingly easy, do-it-yourself anchoring technique, using a product called QuakeHold (also known as Museum Wax).  It’s a putty-like substance that you place on the bottom of your glass or china figurines or vases – anything that would break if it fell off a shelf and hit the floor.  Scott has a short video on his web site that demonstrates the easy way to anchor your items.  

• Make sure that copies of your important documents are printed on a laser printer if possible, onto acid-free, buffered paper.  Acid-free paper will extend the life of your documents by years.  Why a laser printer?  Because documents and photos printed on a laser printer will last longer and are more rugged and resilient than those printed with an ink jet printer.  What about expense and upkeep?  Here’s a great article that we found on choosing the right laser printer for your  home.

Speaking of a family going through the completely unnecessary loss of keepsakes, this heartbreaking story came out of the 2011 Japan Earthquake:  “With each passing day, more and more poignant stories of survivors and victims are emerging.  Immediately after the quake, Katsutaro Hamada, 79, fled to safety with his wife. But then he went back home to retrieve a photo album of his granddaughter, 14-year-old Saori, and grandson, 10-year-old Hikaru. Just then the tsunami came and swept away his home. Rescuers found Hamada’s body, crushed by the first floor bathroom walls. He was holding the album to his chest, Kyodo news agency reported.  ‘He really loved the grandchildren. But it is stupid,’ said his son, Hironobu Hamada.”

The saddest part of this story is that it was completely avoidable.  If the family had simply scanned those photos and left copies with a relative in Tokyo, or uploaded them onto a flash drive, onto Dropbox or an online photo sharing site, they would have had their photos and Hamada would have had the rest of his life to enjoy them.

A Few More Tips

Put keepsakes where you can get to them easily.  You don’t want to be running around during a tornado warning or wildfire trying to find Great-Grandma’s crystal vase!

Do you have a great deal of vital personal or business documents that must be kept safe?   SentrySafe makes file cabinets that are fireproof, waterproof, and crushproof – basically capable of withstanding a 30-foot drop. The cabinets come with high-security locks designed to withstand picking and drilling. The only downside is that they’re very expensive, but for a business, or for people who must keep critical documents safe, it could be well worth the investment.

If you live in an area with a regular disaster season – like hurricane or wildfire season, consider placing your breakable keepsakes in a safe deposit box or in your evacuation location during disaster season.   Place keepsakes in a cabinet with doors that close.  If you live in earthquake country, make sure that the cabinet is secured to the wall so that it won’t fall over in an earthquake, and put QuakeHold Museum Wax on the bottom of the figurine and the back of the wall so it will be more resistant to shaking.  In an area prone to flooding, place valuables on a high shelf above any previous water marks.

And if you have a wine collection – whether it is just a few bottles or a room full – check out QuakeGuardian wine bottle fasteners.  Created to safely secure wine bottles in their wine racks for earthquakes up to 8.0, QuakeGuardian is quickly becoming the fastener of choice for wine connoisseurs worldwide. 

Have Fun Getting Your Stuff Together!

Back It Up

I don’t know about you, but the most important keepsakes in our house are our old family photos, followed closely by our home movies and music. But grabbing piles of photo albums and all your picture frames off the walls is pretty hard to do when you’re running out the door! With Back It Up, you’ll learn quick, easy steps to back up your print/digital photos, home movies, music (including vinyl & cassettes) and save them in multiple, disaster proof locations. Paperback Or Instant Download

 

Keep Everything You Love Safe | The Book Inspired By The Blog

Keep Everything You Love Safe, is filled with quick, easy, 5 minute steps you can take right now, to get everything that’s important to you organized, safe, sound and accessible. Each section covers a different area, from backing up and fixing family photos, home movies and music, to vital documents, medical and financial information and even getting your digital life in order. Paperback Or Instant Download

 

Keep The Stuff You Love Safe

How To Save Your Treasured Voice Mail Messages

How To Save Your Home Movies And Videos

How To Archive Your Digital Photos

How To Archive Your Print Photos

How To Make A Home Inventory

How To Get Your Financial Life In Order

How To Preserve Your Family History

How To Back Up Your Facebook Friends List

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Mobile Command Center

How To Backup Your Music, MP3s And Vinyl Albums

How To Access Your Money No Matter Where You Are