I'm in the process of cleaning my house up to put it on the market the 1st wk in August, and I just can't imagine what I will do when I need to select what I will take into an RV.  All of you parents & grandparents, what do you do with your children's wedding albums, or all those gorgeous grandchild photos?  I know you can scan them & store them on CD's, but while I love to sit down with an album I've looked at hundreds of times, I doubt I would ever sit at the computer, insert a CD, and look at photos.

That is just one item, but I'm sure there are many more.  What do you find it most difficult to leave behind?
gypsy

Gypsy,

To go Full-timing, you have make many choices and changes. Linda and I feel that the ones we made were worth the freedom of the life-style.

Yes, you may not be able to take you albums with you, but I guess my question is, Why wouldn't you want to look at them on your computer? The photos are larger, the quality is good, and can be easily viewed at any time.

We use a photo program that lets us sort and place the photos in albums or where ever we want them, and really don't miss the 50 or so albums that we used to have.
 
In fact i think we look at the photos more now than we did when we had to go and get an album out of the bookcase.

What did we do with the 50 or so albums we used to have? They're now at our Son's house in N. Carolina, and they can enjoy them when ever they want.

There will be many more choices you will have to make before you're ready to Full-time, so just take them one at a time and you'll make it.

Good luck,

Gypsy, both options have worked for us - photos on CDs and computer, and taking some albums with us. We have a large storage area under our bed and that's where we've stored several albums. We don't pull those out much, but they are there if we chose to do so. I also have some pictures that I set up in the RV when we sit in one place for a week or two. The photos on the computer are great. Our screensaver program allows over 100 pictures to randomly come up and I periodically change the pictures. I love it! I can sit and look at them anytime I want. You just need to decide what is important to you and you'll make room for those things. Just be sure to try to enjoy the process. Terry

For us, photo albums would be too heavy to carry around in the RV.  I've found that Picasa is great for organizing pictures into albums on your computer and on the internet to share:  http://picasa.google.com/

I have scanned and saved my photos on SD cards and have a Digital Photo Frame and the photos are randomly shown with different effects. I change the card occasionally and that way I can see all my photos when I want. The good digital frames will cost you between $100-$175 but are well worth it for the memories and storage space you save.  I am sorting all our regular photos and dividing them up to give to our kids.

Oh yes you will set and look at those sweet pictures!!! You just think you wont. Give it about a month of not looking and you will be all over that computer girl friend!!! We have all ours on CD...well most still working on them...but we put them on the computer and run slide show so we can see them all the time. Hey albums are OK and you should keep them in storage. Give them to your kids to look at. Believe me you will adjust to different ways of doing things once you start full timing. Sherri and Joe

Your response gave me a smile.  In most ways I am eager to dash into the unknown and to new adventures - have been all my life.  In a few others, I'm a total dinosaur!  And I definitely have a love/hate relationship with the computer.  Maybe.....
gypsy

HI.. I'm just about ready to begin the scanning process of hundreds of photos. Can anyone suggest a scanner that they found that was user friendly and gave good quality? thanks, Loralie

Recommendations on scanners would be appreciated.

We are in the midst of scanning photos using a HP Photosmart C8180 All-in-One. It is tedious to say the least. We decided to get rid of most of our 30+ albums and scan them on to our external hard drive. (We are getting a second hard for a backup to the backup.) We may keep 2-3 albums and give the kids what ever they want. But most of their pictures are on Picaso or Flikr, so I don't think they will be keeping too many. We also got an electronic photo album but gave it away because of the constant draw on electricity. This is one of the larger projects we have going. I expect it take a long time to get the photos scanned. Then it will be an even longer time to categorize and organize them on Picaso. I probably will save that for when we actually get to full-timer status, Lord willing some time next summer.

I use a Cannon MP160 scanner printer. It is a simple devise to use and it is fast. I like simple. All the scanners down here at the Publishing Company I work at are sooo High Tech and you have to do all the tweeking to get the picture just right...so the Cannon I use suits me fine. Just hit one button and it scans it to a MP file which you can then pop into Photo Shop and crop rotate inhance and on and on....then drop it to your CD. Or you can drop it to your CD and then later do all your cropping and fixing. Good luck to you Speedy

There are numerous services that will scan photos/negatives/slides for you and do it fast and at a good value. Google around for varied pricing and services. You might find value in them, especially since they have advanced tools to correct old, faded, marred pics. If you are looking to  keep the digitals as your prized  heirlooms, having them scanned and corrected by the pros might be the right move for you. It is not all that expensive, especially if you weed out the really bad shots first.

Negatives/slides are the best to scan if you have them. I've had about a thousand of my dad's 35mm slides from the 1940/50's scanned and corrected with superb results at about 35 cents a piece. Took them about a week. Although I have the equipment to scan slides/negs and correct, it would have taken me years of tedious manual agony to do it as the dedicated auto feeding machines the pros have take the labor part away. It was money well spent.

Then go buy those digital picture frames and have a continuous slide show on your walls.

We put  them all on the computer, and have them copied to cd's too.
We also have them  randomly show as a slide show as our screen saver.
Actually we enjoy watching them more this way.
Almost like  the old days when we had slides and showed them on a big screen with our slide projector. Giving the albums to  our kids.