I Love Real Simple.

I was really excited to see that one of our links from Outbrain was an article on Real Simple. It made me feel like I was famous, famous! Like Lovely had finally made it. Then I gave myself an anti-pep talk (coining that term) and reminded myself that these ads are automatically generated by the amazing souls at Outbrain* and that Real Simple did not seek my little website out to advertise on it. Then I went to Real Simple and was reading this great article about organization. There I met Michele Bender, freelance writer, Mommy, New Yorker, unbelievably organized digital photo keeper. From the Real Simple feature:

"Michele’s home-office storage includes a drawer where cords and chargers live in tangle-free bliss. Just below is her showpiece: a photo filing system that holds a decade’s worth of family shots, beautifully organized on colorful CDs. Whenever Michele transfers images to discs, she deletes them from her iPhoto library.

"For digital images: Color-code your collection by storing discs in vibrant cases (slim jewel cases, $11.50 for 25, staples.com)―blue for parties, green for trips, and so on. Use empty cases positioned vertically and marked by the year as dividers; they’ll extend about a half inch above the others.

For old-school snapshots: Mail photos to ScanCafe.com and get them back in digitized form. About 1,200 images (from 29 cents a photo) fit on a DVD; CDs hold far fewer. The company touches up images in a climate-controlled facility monitored 24/7 by armed guards. You can track your precious cargo online every step of the way, and the originals are returned when the process is complete."

ScanCafe.com sounds amazing! It's the opposite of Shutterfly! It would have saved me from having to scan in all, most, a large portion of (whatever) our family photos! To have the images organized and safe is well worth 29 cents a shot, and think: you'd know images like this--