April 10, 2024 • 44 mins
Have you ever stared at a mountain of digital and physical photos, feeling the weight of unorganized memories? You're not alone, and help has arrived with this episode of the Positively Midlife Podcast that Tish hosts solo this week. The special guest Casey Von Stein, better known as Miss Freddie, joins us to unravel the complexities of photo organization, providing insights and strategies that transform this overwhelming task into an achievable mission. She shares her personal shift from capturing to curating moments, emphasizing the legacy we create through organized photo collections for future generations.
Managing the ever-growing digital photo collection we've all amassed by midlife can seem like a herculean task, but it doesn't need to be! This episode guides you through the steps to consolidate your memories, from the initial gathering of photos to the joy of minimal maintenance with cloud storage solutions. Discover how the 'decide once method' can revolutionize your photo-taking habits, and learn to embrace tools that swiftly deal with duplicates and bring order to your digital chaos. And don't worry, we haven't forgotten those live photos – we discuss how to handle them with ease to keep your digital life clutter-free.
For both the creatives and sentimental hearts, we explore innovative ways to keep family memories alive. Tish divulges her secrets for crafting engaging monthly chat books that your children will adore, creating archival-quality yearbooks, and the magic of video albums, which turn your family's adventures into cinematic keepsakes. If you're ready to embark on your photo organization journey, you won't want to miss the details of the Backup Bootcamp course. Join listeners from coast to coast in this episode that's brimming with motivation and actionable advice to curate and safeguard your precious photo moments.
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Website: www.thepositivelymidlifepodcast.com
Email: ellen@positivelymidlifepodcast.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome back to the Positively Midlife Podcast.
So I have a question for all ofyou out there how many times
have you promised yourself thatyou are going to get all of your
photos organized?
You know, I've tried to makethis attempt several times in my
life.
You know, I've gotten boxes out, organizers, all this, and then
(00:24):
it just seems to go nowhereright.
And I did have a great attempton getting some of my Facebook
photos bound into a book, andthat was a great experience.
But I have so much more that'sout there, and so you know I
wanted to.
I wanted us to talk about thistoday.
You know, I think the mainthing that has stopped me
(00:44):
personally is the time it wouldtake, being just overwhelmed
with the different choices ofwhat to do and just not knowing
the best way to kind of getstarted.
So that's why I've invited ournext guest today, casey Von
Stein, and she goes by MissFreddie and she is a
(01:06):
professional photo organizer.
So Miss Freddie is going tohelp us with all our what to do
with our photos and videos, andshe's also going to talk about
some great apps that can startto help us get organized.
I'm so excited today becausewe're going to be learning from
one of the best photo organizersout there, so I want to welcome
(01:31):
you today, casey.
Do you want to go by Caseyduring this, or Miss Freddie?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
You can call me either one.
My name is Casey, but mostpeople online refer to me as
Miss Freddie.
I've been called Freddie sincebirth by my parents, so it's
they're interchangeable to me,either one.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So tell us a little bit about yourself and you know
how you got started into being aprofessional photo organizer.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
So my journey began as a photographer.
I was a photographer in allsorts of realms wedding, pets,
families and that's when Ibecame Miss Freddie.
When I was photographing youngfamilies little kids I wanted
something easy for them to say,so I took my nickname Freddie
and just made it Miss Freddie.
And then, after 10 years ofdoing photography work, it was
(02:23):
so obvious to me that people hadno problem taking photos.
They actually needed help doingsomething with the photos and
backing the photos up andorganizing the photos, and that
was really their pain point, andso I started offering online
courses.
I started offering one-on-oneservices, and it was very
obvious that that is what peoplewanted to learn from me instead
(02:47):
of taking photos professionally.
So I retired from photographyback in 2019, and I've been
doing photo organizing full-timesince then.
A lot of people don't know thisis a career, so it's really
rewarding.
I love this work.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So why is organizing our photos so important,
especially as we start, you know, coming into midlife?
This seems to be a much morenagging thing with me to get
these organized for later, formy kids even.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yes, I think it becomes apparent later as you
age.
Oh my gosh, what, what am Ihanding down to my kids?
And, as we, you know, maybelose our parents or other
important family members and weinherit the mess we suddenly
have a different perspective on,like well, what does matter and
what am I leaving to my kids?
Um, why it's important isbecause it is such a source of
(03:42):
stress.
All the time People arestressed about are they going to
lose their photos?
Is their device going to fail?
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Do they have my Facebook going to be canceled
and all my photos that I'vetaken and shared just poof going
to be gone.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, yes, and so if you can get a system in place
and tackle the project once andfor all, the relief is so worth
it.
Just personally, that's worthit, not to mention the legacy
components of leaving somethingvaluable and meaningful behind
for your kids.
That doesn't feel sooverwhelming.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
So I was so proud of myself when I did that book with
all the pictures from Facebookand then I realized I have one
book and four children.
I thought, uh-oh, pictures fromFacebook.
And then I realized I have onebook and four children.
But but let's talk about whatare some of the challenges that
(04:36):
people face with organizingtheir photographs.
Why is this so hard for us?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Oh my gosh.
I could name a long list of whythis is hard.
I think the most, the biggestreason, is a fear of making a
mistake, because our memoriesmatter so much to us.
These are extremely valuablethings, these photos on our
devices, and we're so afraidthat we're going to click a
(05:01):
wrong button or we're going toplug something into the wrong
place.
Or we're going to click a wrongbutton, or we're going to plug
something into the wrong place,or we're going to make the wrong
decision and we're going tolose everything.
And so I think fear is whatoverwhelms people the most.
But I also think that it's justa lack of confidence, kind of
in the same realm, a lack ofconfidence in what to do.
We never received education inelementary school teaching us
(05:23):
here's how you organize yourphotos, and the landscape has
changed so much.
Right, I grew up withoutdigital photos.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I grew up standing at the Walgreens one hour getting
my film developed and gettingthe free doubles or the triples
and all the things and so wedidn't sometimes more than that
and then sticking them in thesebooks and when I look back at
the old books, they're yellow.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yes, yeah, it's just kind of changed over time, yeah.
So we, we kind of had a handleon things back then.
Right, we had our process ofprinting.
We were so much more aware ofwhat we were doing.
There was a cost associatedwith it.
We had to be conscious aboutthose 24 items on that roll of
film.
And now, once the digital agecame around, it was like, well,
that's her off.
We had to be conscious aboutthose 24 items on that roll of
film and now, once the digitalage came around, it was like,
well, that's her off.
We're taking pictures of everymeal we eat, every outfit the
kid wore when they were a weekold.
(06:13):
I mean, the volume, the volumehas changed and we were never
given the tools or the educationon how to manage it.
So I think there's definitely alack of confidence.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
I'm even afraid to get rid of duplicates.
I'm like, well, you know, Ithink this is the best pose, but
I don't even and it's like it'snot even rational Some of these
fears that I have but it is sonormal.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
It's like universal.
People feel like they're theonly ones that are carrying this
, and it is not true.
I work with thousands of peoplethat all say the exact same
things.
None of us were given thosetools.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Well, let's start talking about some of the
practical tips to organizingyour photos.
Like where would you start at?
Like a hot mess.
Like me, that my photos.
I have old photos.
I have photos from mygrandmother.
I have old photos.
I have photos from mygrandmother.
I have photos of people thatare so old.
I wasn't born, it was.
(07:13):
My grandmother was a child,when I don't even know who they
are anymore, but I seem to bethe keeper of the photos and I'm
not doing it well, so where issomeone?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
like me, and you described everybody's situation.
We all have photos scattered inmultiple places in multiple
formats.
My advice is to view eachproject separately.
How can we make this smaller?
And one way we can do that isto focus on digital photos first
.
So the boxes you've inheritedand the things that are in your
(07:39):
closet, we're going to set thoseaside for now and we're going
to get our digital system inplace, because the reality is
our digital photos are morevulnerable.
Those things have been sittingin the closet Okay For many
years and every day hard drivesfail, every day Phone, like you
know.
Phones get lost and so ourdigital items are more
vulnerable.
(07:59):
So if we can start there andget our digital system built, it
will make it easier to tacklethat closet later when we decide
we want to digitize that.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
We'll know right where to put it right where it
goes.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
So that's my first tip is get your digital house in
order and then you can tackleother photo related projects,
whether that's making books orscanning family history photos.
Whatever the project is, it'seasier once you've built your
house, the foundation.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
What are some tools that can help us get our digital
photos in order, like removethe duplicates and different
ways to store?
What kind of tools do we needto go to?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yes, so my process with every client and every
student is to start by gatheringall the photos into one place I
call it a hub, and that's trulyjust a matter of often copying
and pasting, plugging in thedevices, downloading from the
cloud service.
None of it is hard work, but itdoes take time, and so the
first thing that I tell peopleto do is just make a list of
(09:01):
what those things are.
Is it Google Photos?
Is it iCloud?
Is it Dropbox?
Is it a whole old hard drive inyour closet?
Make a list of where the photoslive, and then you can chip
away at that list one by one bybringing them all to one place.
I use an external hard drive asthat collecting ground so that
I have lots of space.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Wow, I never thought of that.
So you actually have peoplefigure out where all their
photos are digitally stored andthen you're going to have them
systematically go into a harddrive.
That's a physical hard drive inyour hand, so it's not like to
another source, digital source.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Got one plugged in right here.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
OK, so it's small.
It's like a small, like what isthat About?
An eight by or four by four boxor something yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, size of a wallet.
The advantage of using anexternal hard drive is most of
our computers these days areactually not big enough to
handle our whole photo library.
You know, computers are gettingsmaller and smaller.
Price point doesn't seem to getsmaller and smaller and it's
expensive to upgrade to have alot of space on our computers
now, and so a hard external harddrive will run you about $100.
(10:12):
And it's going to have a lot ofspace.
So you know you can bringeverything to it.
And the big key I want toemphasize on this collection
process, where we're gatheringeverything.
So we're not even going toworry about duplicates, so
you're not going to spend themental energy thinking about Ooh
, is this item on my phone thesame as what I had in Dropbox or
(10:35):
the same as what was on thatold computer?
You're just gathering a hundredpercent of all the things,
because once we get all of ourphotos in one place, that's when
we can use technology to startcleaning up our mess.
We can let it help us, but wegot to get them all into one
place first so we can really getour arms around the project.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
So when we were talking about doing this episode
, I kind of looked on just myphone, and on my phone I have
just shy of 30,000 photos and2,700 videos, and I keep getting
nasty grams that these are notbacked up, that I needed to buy
(11:11):
more iCloud storage and I feellike I'm gambling here, and so
for a hundred dollars, I canhave the peace of mind by being
able to shift all of those over.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yes, and you don't have to remove them from your
phone.
Look at my phone.
Mine has 24,763 photos.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
I see that yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
There's nothing wrong with that number.
People share their number withme, always with the same like
shame or guilt behind it.
There's nothing wrong with thatnumber.
Those are memories, blessingsin your life that you've chosen
to document, and it's great thatyou have 30,000 photos on your
phone.
It only feels overwhelmingbecause you don't have a system
(11:52):
right.
You don't have the confidencethat, like you know, they're
backed up or you know what to dowith them.
It feels overwhelming right nowbecause you're worried that
they're that you're gambling,yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah, yeah, I'm gambling for sure.
So once we have downloaded allthese digital photos from all
our different stuff, what do youdo then?
What's the next step after that?
You've gathered everybody.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Yes, I've gathered everything and I've made a huge
mess on that hard drive.
The next thing I do is runduplicate finding software, so
it will look at the whole messwe put on that hard drive.
The next thing I do is runduplicate finding software, so
it will look at the whole messwe put on that hard drive and
evaluate where the overlapexists.
And it is smart enough to belooking for visual matches, so
(12:38):
it's looking at the photo itselfto determine if they match.
And it's smart enough to keepthe best version with the most
resolution.
And it's automatic.
You just click a button and itevaluates everything.
And it's not scary because youget to review the results and
confirm along the way before anychanges are made.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
So this is it like an AI right?
That's going to it likepredates Technology.
That's going to it likepredates technology that's going
to pick the best picture itpredates that, but yes, it's.
Ai.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
I've been using them for years.
There's different ones for Macand PC, but they're very
affordable and so valuable tothink to have to go one by one
for all your photos just takeforever.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
And are you finding they're pretty accurate in
picking that best photo?
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah, you are in control of the logic that it's
using and so I tell it I wantyou to keep the best resolution
or the earliest create date orthe newest create date you can
control all of that or if it'sin an album or if it's been
favorited, I want those to takepriority.
It's really, it's really coolsoftware.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Is it going to like determine?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
like, show the one, only the ones where I look
skinny, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
That's where AI is going to take us.
I guess I'm asking for too muchthere.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Okay, so then we've gotten rid of all of our
duplicates.
And what do we do next?
So then I get it.
I run it through a sortingprogram that gets it all
chronologically, so that is nolonger in folders that say like
old iPhone one, uh, googledownload, you know.
I get it all shuffled into onecohesive system that's just
folders by year and month, andthen it looks great, even though
(14:25):
there's junk in there.
We cleaned up nothing, we didn'tdelete the blurry pictures and
the screenshots.
It just feels so much betterbecause now it's in a structure
and then we can start makingbackup copies.
Then we could put it in a cloudservice where we maybe have
some benefits like facialrecognition and search.
So getting that one copy ofyour entire photo library gives
(14:50):
us the freedom to then take itplaces that are going to help us
.
Maybe we upload it into GooglePhotos and then it can name all
the faces and it can find allthe pictures we want just by
searching the word dog.
But doing that work, getting itall together, makes it so much
more enjoyable when you get itinto the service that you're
going to use.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
And then, how often do we need to keep up with
downloading into this device andrunning that software again?
How often do you suggest thatpeople do that?
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Once you build the system, you don't have to do too
much maintenance.
I download the most recent yearonce a year to my hard drive,
so I just add 2023 to the harddrive and I don't really deal
with duplicates too much now,because we're just using our
phone to take pictures, so it'scoming from one place, but I'm
(15:41):
taking it from the phone andputting it on the hard drive.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Okay, now you have this method called the decide
once method, with photographs.
What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
What does that mean?
So I apply that to when I'm outat an event, taking the
pictures, like one picture isenough to remember the event.
You can take absolutely.
You can take more pictures, butwhen your son is blowing out
the candles on the birthday cake, you don't need 25 pictures of
that, you can just take one.
So when we just take onepicture, you're deciding once
that's the picture, and then itmakes everything easier down the
(16:23):
road.
Now, when I'm making a calendarat the end of the year or
making a photo book or a photogift, I only have the one
picture.
I already decided that's what Ilike and that's what I'm going
to use.
So, yeah, I call it one anddone.
That's hard for people morethan others.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, I think that would take a little getting used
to, cause we're so like youknow, the ones of us that grew
up in where we took a camerawith us and had to develop the
film, that we take all thesepictures because we want the
perfect one and stuff.
So you know, to kind of getmore.
You know specific, moreintentional with.
You, know what the photo is.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
But think of what that stems from.
We couldn't see the picturesthat we were taking on film,
right, so we had to take extrasto guarantee that it turned out
the eyes weren't closed orsomething we can see right now
that we got that picture of himblowing out the candles on the
birthday cake so then we canstop.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Now, I'm one of these people that sometimes some of
my pictures are live photos andsome are just photo photos and I
don't know how I do that allthe time.
But do you have to handle thoselive photos?
That kind of move it alwaysreminds me of like a Harry
Potter episode with thephotographs and people are
moving in the photographs.
(17:42):
Do you handle those differently?
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I personally don't love live photos because what
they are is a photo plus a lowresolution video.
That's what they are, and so tome, that feels like well, now I
got double the stuff for everyphoto that I take.
If I leave Apple, it nowbecomes a photo and a video, and
I got to deal with that and I'mI'm I'm fine with just having
(18:08):
the photos.
That's how I've always been.
We've always had just stillphotos.
We've been okay.
If I want video footage, I'mgoing to take a video.
It's like a different to me.
They're two different things.
Some people love live photosand to them absolutely keep
using it, but for me, I feltlike it was going to be another
decision.
I was going to have to makemore clutter that I'm going to
have to deal with, and so Iturned it off and I don't use
(18:28):
live photos personally.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Okay, okay.
Now the other thing is um, so,once we get organized, kind of
going back to that organization,um, how, how do you recommend
that people get better atdeleting the extra as they go
along?
Do you recommend that they kindof do that?
Is it?
Is that a daily, weekly?
What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yes, I'm glad that you qualified that with once.
We get everything into oneplace first, because I do think
that's the priority, becausethen, once you have it in one
place, then cleanup is moreeffective.
You're cleaning up your actualcollection rather than just this
little bandaid of cleaning uppart of my phone or cleaning up
part of a cloud service.
So, yeah, everything'sorganized.
One great, then.
(19:13):
I think cleanup can be the nextstage.
And one great habit I call thedaily delete, where you make it
smaller by just searchingtoday's date in your library.
So today you can type in March28th and just see all the March
28th content all the way back tothe beginning of your library,
and you can clean that up oneday at a time.
So that might feel too big if.
(19:34):
If you have a really largelibrary, the smaller version of
that would be like just reviewwhat happened today, delete
those screenshots you just tookthat when you were at the
grocery store or the thing thatyou texted to your kid.
You can, you just need to getinto a practice.
Whether it's daily, weekly,monthly, you decide what works
for you, but you need to getinto a practice of review or
(19:55):
else these things just kind ofspiral way out of control.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yes, absolutely, yeah , okay, so let's start talking
about kind of some of the bestproducts.
So, now that we have everythingin a central location and we've
done our deleting and we'vekind of fine-tuned everything,
and we've done our deleting andwe've kind of fine-tuned
everything, what are some of thebest printing options?
And you know the affordableones, the, you know ones that
(20:23):
are like keepsake quality.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
What does that look like?
Great question.
My favorite for ease andaffordability is Chatbooks.
It's an app that you downloadon your phone.
You pick your favorite photosfrom your camera roll and very
(20:47):
affordably get them into a book.
And then, for the more keepsakequality or archival quality,
the company that I like iscalled Printique.
They are owned by Adorama.
That's a professional cameracompany out of Brooklyn.
They have the more archivalquality printing.
You're going to pay a littlebit more and get a much fancier
book that's going to last you alittle longer.
(21:08):
So I personally use both in myfamily.
I use chat books to get monthlybooks.
I pick my 30 favorites.
They come immediately.
They come immediately, theycost $7 and my kids can do
whatever they want with themLook at them real quick, get the
photos in their hands and thenonce a year I make what I call a
family yearbook where I took myfavorite 300 photos or so from
(21:28):
the year and I put them in anarchival quality.
One of those.
That's what I would keep on theshelf and that's what I want to
carry long-term.
One of those.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
That's what I would keep on the shelf and that's
what I want to carry long term.
Oh, that's.
That's kind of like a niceChristmas gift to the family.
Now, if you have multiplechildren, do you recommend
multiple copies, is it?
It does it get more affordable,or is buying two copies or
three copies just as expensive?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I made the decision that I was only going to make
one copy because I just I didn'twant to house that many books
and make that big of aninvestment without really
knowing what my kids'preferences are going to be when
they leave the house.
My kids are 11 and nine andthey enjoy these books right now
.
I don't know that they're goingto want a whole bookshelf of
(22:20):
them by the time they're 18 totake with them.
If that that time they do, Ican absolutely print additional
copies, or they can take mycopies, maybe, but I didn't want
to commit to buying threecopies of every book forever, so
I did not purchase copies formy kids gotcha, I guess.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I guess it can rotate me um now.
You also do video albums.
Talk about that and I don'tthink I've utilized that.
(23:04):
You know, like videos, likeI'll take them, we'll look at
them, but I never thought of avideo album.
So how does that work?
Speaker 2 (23:12):
yes, this started four or five years ago.
For me, I thought it would befun to make a video after a
family trip.
So during the trip I wasshooting video footage and when
we got home I set it to musicand I made like a five minute
recap video and my kids loved it.
(23:33):
So they ask every single trip,can you make a video?
And so I started that practice.
First I had these videos and Iwas thinking how can I get this
in a format my kids could enjoy?
My kids don't have phones yetor devices, so I found what I
call a video book or devices.
(23:56):
So I found what is I call avideo book.
You can buy them through mywebsite, but it's basically a
little screen but that's all itdoes is play the video.
So it's like a flash drivewhere I loaded the videos on it
and then my kids can open it andhit, play and just watch those.
But they love that book.
They show it to all theirlittle friends.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
The babysitter who comes over they play these
videos for them, and so it'sreally fun to watch them enjoy
it rather than just being hiddenon so and just so our listeners
know, we're going to have thelinks for all this stuff, how to
get to your products andeverything you know, so you'll
be able to to find that.
But those video albums, sothey're just like other albums,
(24:32):
they're individual.
For an individual video, right,is there special?
I put putting I put several.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yeah, I put several videos on it, so I have maybe 10
videos like a playlist thatthey then watch.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yeah, yeah, oh, there's actual playlists.
I like that too, so it's notlike you have to have like 10
different uh, these video, yeahsomething I started buying one a
year.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Just there's the family yearbook and then there's
the video book, and if I coulddo it differently now that many
years have passed, I would justmake like family videos volume
one, load it till it was full,because now I have a lot of
these books laying around and mykids still enjoy them, so it's
fine.
But I would probably do it at alittle larger scale, not so
(25:18):
strict, once per year.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
I love that and sometimes, like you know, again,
I think this is a change thatI'm going to make.
Going forward is to take morevideo and less pictures.
So it just takes a single videoto kind of get the whole gist
of a, an event, you know, andit's more interactive, but I
guess it's it's been that Ididn't know quite how to share
(25:40):
it or you know how to view it.
But to have a book, like anactual physical thing where you
can load it into, I love that.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, the first step is making the keepsake video.
I guess you could call it right, cause they're not just clips
from my iPhone that my kids arewatching.
I, you know, set it to musicand I clipped it down to be the
to like, fit the music, likeit's kind of a piece of art.
I love it, I love it.
I do have a course teaching howto make those custom videos.
(26:11):
If that is something thatinterests you and you don't have
to put them on a book, you canput them on YouTube, you can put
it on Facebook, you can dowhatever you want with those
custom videos, but I do lovehaving the books for my kids.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
You have even just a separate course.
That really just specific tohow to do that.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yep, oh, I love that.
Is that something that somebodycould gift to someone else?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yes, yeah, all of my courses are available, yep, any
courses available as a giftcertificate or the book.
The video book itself could begifted.
My favorite one that I did wasI've got two favorites.
One was for grandma's 90thbirthday.
They recorded videos of all thegrandkids saying happy birthday
, grandma, and sharing a memorythat they loved of her, and then
(26:53):
, at 90 years old, she got thebook not super tech savvy All
she had to do was open it andthen watch all of her grandkids
talking to her.
That one was great.
And then I did a similar onefor Father's Day, where he
didn't know.
The mom filmed videos of thekids doing similar messages and
I thought that was cute.
So, yes, they are great gifts,no matter the tech level.
(27:15):
My kids can use these astoddlers, or grandma and her
90th birthday can use it.
They don't require any techsavvy.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
To view, it To put it together.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
It's just a play button.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, okay, I love that.
All right, um, so now that wehave all of our digital stuff
organized, we we know how we'regoing to be printing it out or
making books and all that stuff.
Now we have that closet that wewere talking about, where we
have the boxes of the old photos.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Yeah, I thought we were just going to ignore the
closet keep the door closed.
Yes, that is its own project.
Yes, but it's actually can bereally fun work, just as
organizing your digital photoscan be fun work because you're
unearthing old memories youhaven't seen in a long time.
That box in the closet has somehidden gems in there too.
(28:08):
So my advice is the same whenyou tackle a physical or
physical photo project, and thatis to try to make it smaller.
So instead of viewing the wholecloset, say, well, this month
I'm tackling this box or how canyou make it smaller, just to
make it feel achievable.
And then my advice is to kindof sort into really high-level
(28:31):
categories as you're tackling abox.
At first I have a pile that'strash Like this is a photo of a
tree.
I don't know any backstory onthe tree, there's no people in
the photo, there's no notes.
I don't need to keep the photoof the tree.
The doubles and the triples wegot for free when we developed
those can go in the trash pile.
So the first pass through a boxI'm really just looking for
(28:55):
what doesn't even matter, whatcan I throw away, and often
that's most of the box.
But you're left with a stackLike these matter to me and that
with those I move on todigitizing so you can hire
somebody to scan your photos.
I offer those services.
You could buy a scanner to doit yourself at home.
I have a course that teachesyou how to do it.
(29:16):
But then, when you'redigitizing them, you add them
right into your hub with all ofyour digital stuff that you
organized, and once they're inthere, they get the same tech
benefits.
So the facial recognition willidentify the faces on those
scans.
You can search, like I saidearlier, for the word dog, and
it works just on those scans,like it did with your digital
(29:39):
photos.
And so that's when it getsreally fun.
You get all of these picturesfrom your childhood and your
family into this and you canmake videos, you can make books,
you can share things withfamily easier.
When they're in a box in yourcloset, not much you can do with
it, but once you get themdigital, you can really do a lot
(30:00):
.
It's really fun once you getthere.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Oh, I like that and I like how, again, you have
another course that kind ofhelps with just really that
specific thing of how to onceyou have them gathered they have
to have them gathered, and thenyou're going to teach how to
scan and and what you can dowith those scan photos.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Yes, yep, the technical stuff, like if you
want to change dates and youwant to rename them, and the
settings to use on the scanner,all that.
Yeah, my courses are all likeseparate projects, because the
back to the thing I said at thebeginning is you have to focus
on one thing at a time or you'renever going to to finish this
project.
So I have a course that tacklesthe digital organizing where I
(30:39):
think you should start.
That's called backup bootcamp.
That's my most popular course.
But then if you decide you wantto make photo books, there's a
course on that.
If you want to make customvideos, like we talked about,
there's a course on that.
If you want to scan, there's acourse on that.
So, one at a time, break theproject down.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
I like that.
Now you know again, followingyou on social media, you had
talked one time about Apple, theApple journal app and how we
can use that with our photos,and I bet a lot of people don't
even know that there's an applejournal app it's brand new.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
It's brand new.
It just came out december,january.
It just came out a few monthsago and, uh, it's pretty neat.
It has prompts in there becauseit, you know, has access on
your phone to see when you tooka lot of photos when you did a
workout, and it will prompt youLike, would you like to journal
(31:32):
about this hike that you did atXYZ location?
And you can add in photos.
You can add journaling.
The nice thing is Apple'sreally big on privacy, so all of
this is encrypted and it's notaccessible to other people.
It's all on your device, foryour eyes only, and so it's.
That's great.
(31:52):
Apple's big on privacy.
It's just in its firstiteration, so I hope it will
continue to improve.
But yeah, they just launched it.
It's free, it's on your iPhoneautomatically and you can play
around with it.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
You know, as we're talking and stuff like that, you
know it doesn't seem sodaunting.
You know the way you'redescribing, you know breaking it
out, doing different parts ofthis that allow us to put it all
together.
It really isn't.
But you know, I don't thinkpeople realize there is a real
psychological benefit toorganizing your photographs.
Yeah, what have you seen whenyou work with clients?
What do you see as the impact?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Oh, the weight relief off the shoulders of lifting
this burden of I'm always afraidI'm going to lose my photos or
I don't know what to do withthem, always afraid I'm going to
lose my photos or I don't knowwhat to do with them.
That is such a psychologicalgift because then photos become
fun again.
Like you can do all these funthings we're talking about feels
like you can't do it whenyou're just worried about having
(32:55):
30,000 on your phone and notknowing what to do with them.
So the that is a really bigemotional component.
I've also heard from a lot ofclients saying like I watched my
girls looking at our Google Hubor our Apple TV and they were
seeing all these memories fromtheir childhood that they had
never seen before.
And so it's watching yourfamily enjoy the memories that
(33:16):
legacy component is really sucha gift too.
So it all starts with justgetting those digital photos
organized and it is a lot ofwork.
I mean I know this sounds likereally fun and uplifting and
easy and conversation.
It's going to take time, butthat work is so worth it because
then you get to do the funstuff.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
So what type of time commitment are we talking about
when we start to, you know,download and organize um?
What type, what type of timecommitment should someone really
expect?
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, it varies dramatically.
So my backup bootcamp course isthe one that gets your digital
photos organized and backed up.
Um, it's wildly different foreveryone because it depends on
your computer speed, yourinternet speed, your tech
savviness, the number of photosyou have.
But the average student takesabout a month to do the project.
(34:12):
Now, that's not activelyworking for a month.
There's so much waiting.
You run the duplicate finder.
It runs overnight.
You come check it the next dayor you download a batch from the
website.
You come back check it in acouple hours.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
But start to finish.
I would set aside about a monthof just working on it little by
little.
Now, your bootcamp, is thatlike a one day thing, or is that
like you go several timesduring like that month process?
Speaker 2 (34:36):
It's a self paced course.
So as soon as you buy it youhave access to all the lessons
and you move at your own pace.
So the nice thing aboutfollowing a course is there's
lessons broken out so you cansay, oh, life's getting busy,
I'm on this lesson, I'm going tocome back to it in two months
and then pick up from where youleft off.
And then also you get access tofuture updates.
So the reality is tech isconstantly changing and I have
(35:00):
to go into that course andupdate.
Here's what the duplicatefinder looks like now and here's
what this cloud service lookslike now.
So it's I call it a choose yourown adventure.
There's a path for pc users, apath for mac users and you get
to pick from different popularcloud services and kind of make
your choice and then followthrough boot camp with those
choices.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
I would think to get like a buddy that was going
through it at the same time, tokind of keep you back and forth.
Where are you today?
Where?
Because I could see like youcould easily like keep putting
it on the back burner and thisis really meant to get you
through this, not taking overyour lifetime you know time
(35:41):
commitment, but a let's do alittle bit at a time to get you
there.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
I love that.
That's huge.
And I've had people use me asthat accountability partner.
I have one-on-one consults andthey'll book one a month and
then I give them homework.
By next consult you got to, youhave to have finished this, you
know.
So I've had people use me orpay me to be that accountability
partner.
I love it If it's one of yourfriends and maybe you guys get
together and work on it a littlebit together and then you have
(36:09):
homework and it can make it morefun to have it be more social,
for sure.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
I think by using you, you could highlight very early
on like, hey, this is, maybethis could make it go easier.
You know, you can kind of, youknow, coach through.
It's Just like going to the gymIf you don't know how to use
the equipment.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
It's not going to be as effective I like that, yes, I
do offer something called asupport group.
Cause you can't really findinformation about it on my
website, cause I only invitepeople who are in the core
students to come and do it, buttwice a year.
I do a support group and it's agroup of like 10 of us on zoom.
We meet once a week for sixweeks and we all work through it
(36:48):
to get there and I screen sharewith everyone individually so I
can check on their work andgive them personalized
suggestions.
Like you said, maybe you shoulddo this differently.
It's it's pretty hands-on, butsometimes that's what it takes
to get across the finish line.
Sometimes a self-paced coursejust doesn't work for everybody.
They need a little more pushingacross the finish line.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
You have self-paced courses, you have these type of
courses, you have boot camps,support groups, one-on-one
sessions.
I mean you really offer a lotof different opportunities.
You know, I love the videoclass that you offer, just the
digital organizing the backupboot camp, the support groups
(37:29):
and again, with the supportgroups, you have to be actively
going through your other coursesto be part of that, which makes
complete sense because youbring someone from the outside
and it would be chaos becausethey don't know where.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Yeah, they need to have the videos to reference
what we're learning together.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, what type of cost are they looking at?
Just to get started.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Bootcamp is $99.
It is a one-time cost, not asubscription, and you get access
to the future updates, like Isaid, and then all the other
courses are less than that.
So I call them fast classes.
The video one is a fast class.
That means it's just one videoand it's $15.
So I tried to keep my thingsvery affordable so that when you
(38:12):
feel inspired to work on one ofthese projects, you can jump
right in and do it when you'refeeling motivated, because the
motivation is the key.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
What was one of your biggest success stories with
helping to organize somebody.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Oh my gosh, my biggest one, memorable to you.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
You don't have to be named or anything.
No, I would never name names.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
but I had somebody who had 4.7 million files when
we started because she had madeall these backup copies and she
didn't trust any of them.
So she had 10 hard drives allwith portions of different
things on them and I so Istarted with 4.7 million files
and I got her down to about300,000.
(38:53):
That's her finished library.
She takes lots of pictures.
She had a big library but itwasn't 4.7 million.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
That was a big project.
That one took a year.
Okay, so if you can get someonelike that organized, you can
deal with the regulators of us.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
That puts your 30,000 in perspective.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Yeah, if it makes you feel better.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
my average students have 30 to 40,000 on their phone
, so that's a very normal numberthat you have.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
So what is your best piece of advice to someone in
midlife when it comes toorganizing their photos?
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Just start.
You have to just start, pickthe one project.
Like I said, my advice is tostart with digital organizing
and just start chip away at it,cause once the digital stuff's
in order, you can move on tophysical, you can move on to
making books, you can move on tomaking videos, whatever you
want to do with it.
I worked on a really fun legacyproject for my mother-in-law
(39:51):
years ago where she had a wholeroom in her house that's full of
scrapbooks and pictures andloose photos.
And she turned to me.
She has three boys and she saidI don't think they're going to
want any of this, I don't knowwhat to do with it.
And we worked on it over acouple of years.
We scanned everything in and Iturned it into eight books.
(40:13):
They're chapters of her life.
So it's like her childhood, hermarriage, her three kids each
get a book.
The second marriage and thenshe had two really, really
transformational trips in herlife a trip around the world
when she graduated high schooland a trip around the U?
S when she was nine and herparents took her to school.
So they had she had me makededicated books for those two
trips.
So these eight albums sit inher living room, shows them to
(40:37):
everybody, and I know she'sgetting a ton of enjoyment out
of them already.
But I know when she is nolonger with us it's a lot easier
for us to keep those eightbooks than it is to keep that
whole room that was full of allthe scrapbooks we started.
So start one step at a time,but that could be your end
picture of you have just a muchmanageable, more meaningful
(40:59):
thing to hand down to your kids.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yeah, Okay, we ask all of our guests this question
what is your superpower?
Speaker 2 (41:09):
My about page on miss freddiecom says photo
organizing is my superpower.
So that, as may be obvious fromtoday's conversation, but I'd
say on one level further, beingdecisive about what to keep and
throw away, I think is asuperpower because I've learned
that people aren't good at that.
That's why we have 30,000 onour phone.
(41:30):
It's because we can't decidebetween things, and my years as
a photographer really honed thatskill and so I am very decisive
, which makes it easier to getmy books done.
I make the decisions.
I adhere to that done is betterthan perfect philosophy.
And I get my's done.
I make the decisions.
I adhere to that done is betterthan perfect philosophy.
And I get.
I get my stuff done.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
This has really beenenlightening and definitely
inspiring and I hope ourlisteners reach out to you to
start some of these courses.
It's important and it willreally put that peace of mind
that we were talking about.
But before we go, I also wantedto do a big shout out to some
of our newest listeners inDanbury, connecticut, sheboygan,
(42:14):
wisconsin, lake Zurich,illinois and Yucca Valley,
california.
I love that new people arealways kind of joining the
podcast.
Definitely share this with afriend, share this episode in
particular, with some friendsand, you know, start to do this
together as like a group and,you know, take some of these
(42:36):
courses and stuff like that.
You know what a gift to eachother.
And again, I think some ofthese courses for for friends
and stuff what a great gift thatwould be.
So, thank you so, so much.
You can always find us on thepositively midlife podcastcom,
so sign up for our newsletters.
(42:57):
We're going to be starting somenewsletters soon and you can
see all of our obsessions andblogs and stuff that we're
making there.
But thank you so much, msFreddie.
I think this is really going toinspire a lot of people to get
started.
Thank you for everything.
Welcome back to the Positively Midlife Podcast.
So I have a question for all ofyou out there how many times
have you promised yourself thatyou are going to get all of your
photos organized?
You know, I've tried to makethis attempt several times in my
life.
You know, I've gotten boxes out, organizers, all this, and then
(00:24):
it just seems to go nowhereright.
And I did have a great attempton getting some of my Facebook
photos bound into a book, andthat was a great experience.
But I have so much more that'sout there, and so you know I
wanted to.
I wanted us to talk about thistoday.
You know, I think the mainthing that has stopped me
(00:44):
personally is the time it wouldtake, being just overwhelmed
with the different choices ofwhat to do and just not knowing
the best way to kind of getstarted.
So that's why I've invited ournext guest today, casey Von
Stein, and she goes by MissFreddie and she is a
(01:06):
professional photo organizer.
So Miss Freddie is going tohelp us with all our what to do
with our photos and videos, andshe's also going to talk about
some great apps that can startto help us get organized.
I'm so excited today becausewe're going to be learning from
one of the best photo organizersout there, so I want to welcome
(01:31):
you today, casey.
Do you want to go by Caseyduring this, or Miss Freddie?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
You can call me either one.
My name is Casey, but mostpeople online refer to me as
Miss Freddie.
I've been called Freddie sincebirth by my parents, so it's
they're interchangeable to me,either one.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So tell us a little bit about yourself and you know
how you got started into being aprofessional photo organizer.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
So my journey began as a photographer.
I was a photographer in allsorts of realms wedding, pets,
families and that's when Ibecame Miss Freddie.
When I was photographing youngfamilies little kids I wanted
something easy for them to say,so I took my nickname Freddie
and just made it Miss Freddie.
And then, after 10 years ofdoing photography work, it was
(02:23):
so obvious to me that people hadno problem taking photos.
They actually needed help doingsomething with the photos and
backing the photos up andorganizing the photos, and that
was really their pain point, andso I started offering online
courses.
I started offering one-on-oneservices, and it was very
obvious that that is what peoplewanted to learn from me instead
(02:47):
of taking photos professionally.
So I retired from photographyback in 2019, and I've been
doing photo organizing full-timesince then.
A lot of people don't know thisis a career, so it's really
rewarding.
I love this work.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So why is organizing our photos so important,
especially as we start, you know, coming into midlife?
This seems to be a much morenagging thing with me to get
these organized for later, formy kids even.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yes, I think it becomes apparent later as you
age.
Oh my gosh, what, what am Ihanding down to my kids?
And, as we, you know, maybelose our parents or other
important family members and weinherit the mess we suddenly
have a different perspective on,like well, what does matter and
what am I leaving to my kids?
Um, why it's important isbecause it is such a source of
(03:42):
stress.
All the time People arestressed about are they going to
lose their photos?
Is their device going to fail?
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Do they have my Facebook going to be canceled
and all my photos that I'vetaken and shared just poof going
to be gone.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, yes, and so if you can get a system in place
and tackle the project once andfor all, the relief is so worth
it.
Just personally, that's worthit, not to mention the legacy
components of leaving somethingvaluable and meaningful behind
for your kids.
That doesn't feel sooverwhelming.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
So I was so proud of myself when I did that book with
all the pictures from Facebookand then I realized I have one
book and four children.
I thought, uh-oh, pictures fromFacebook.
And then I realized I have onebook and four children.
But but let's talk about whatare some of the challenges that
(04:36):
people face with organizingtheir photographs.
Why is this so hard for us?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Oh my gosh.
I could name a long list of whythis is hard.
I think the most, the biggestreason, is a fear of making a
mistake, because our memoriesmatter so much to us.
These are extremely valuablethings, these photos on our
devices, and we're so afraidthat we're going to click a
(05:01):
wrong button or we're going toplug something into the wrong
place.
Or we're going to click a wrongbutton, or we're going to plug
something into the wrong place,or we're going to make the wrong
decision and we're going tolose everything.
And so I think fear is whatoverwhelms people the most.
But I also think that it's justa lack of confidence, kind of
in the same realm, a lack ofconfidence in what to do.
We never received education inelementary school teaching us
(05:23):
here's how you organize yourphotos, and the landscape has
changed so much.
Right, I grew up withoutdigital photos.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I grew up standing at the Walgreens one hour getting
my film developed and gettingthe free doubles or the triples
and all the things and so wedidn't sometimes more than that
and then sticking them in thesebooks and when I look back at
the old books, they're yellow.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yes, yeah, it's just kind of changed over time, yeah.
So we, we kind of had a handleon things back then.
Right, we had our process ofprinting.
We were so much more aware ofwhat we were doing.
There was a cost associatedwith it.
We had to be conscious aboutthose 24 items on that roll of
film.
And now, once the digital agecame around, it was like, well,
that's her off.
We had to be conscious aboutthose 24 items on that roll of
film and now, once the digitalage came around, it was like,
well, that's her off.
We're taking pictures of everymeal we eat, every outfit the
kid wore when they were a weekold.
(06:13):
I mean, the volume, the volumehas changed and we were never
given the tools or the educationon how to manage it.
So I think there's definitely alack of confidence.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
I'm even afraid to get rid of duplicates.
I'm like, well, you know, Ithink this is the best pose, but
I don't even and it's like it'snot even rational Some of these
fears that I have but it is sonormal.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
It's like universal.
People feel like they're theonly ones that are carrying this
, and it is not true.
I work with thousands of peoplethat all say the exact same
things.
None of us were given thosetools.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Well, let's start talking about some of the
practical tips to organizingyour photos.
Like where would you start at?
Like a hot mess.
Like me, that my photos.
I have old photos.
I have photos from mygrandmother.
I have old photos.
I have photos from mygrandmother.
I have photos of people thatare so old.
I wasn't born, it was.
(07:13):
My grandmother was a child,when I don't even know who they
are anymore, but I seem to bethe keeper of the photos and I'm
not doing it well, so where issomeone?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
like me, and you described everybody's situation.
We all have photos scattered inmultiple places in multiple
formats.
My advice is to view eachproject separately.
How can we make this smaller?
And one way we can do that isto focus on digital photos first
.
So the boxes you've inheritedand the things that are in your
(07:39):
closet, we're going to set thoseaside for now and we're going
to get our digital system inplace, because the reality is
our digital photos are morevulnerable.
Those things have been sittingin the closet Okay For many
years and every day hard drivesfail, every day Phone, like you
know.
Phones get lost and so ourdigital items are more
vulnerable.
(07:59):
So if we can start there andget our digital system built, it
will make it easier to tacklethat closet later when we decide
we want to digitize that.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
We'll know right where to put it right where it
goes.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
So that's my first tip is get your digital house in
order and then you can tackleother photo related projects,
whether that's making books orscanning family history photos.
Whatever the project is, it'seasier once you've built your
house, the foundation.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
What are some tools that can help us get our digital
photos in order, like removethe duplicates and different
ways to store?
What kind of tools do we needto go to?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yes, so my process with every client and every
student is to start by gatheringall the photos into one place I
call it a hub, and that's trulyjust a matter of often copying
and pasting, plugging in thedevices, downloading from the
cloud service.
None of it is hard work, but itdoes take time, and so the
first thing that I tell peopleto do is just make a list of
(09:01):
what those things are.
Is it Google Photos?
Is it iCloud?
Is it Dropbox?
Is it a whole old hard drive inyour closet?
Make a list of where the photoslive, and then you can chip
away at that list one by one bybringing them all to one place.
I use an external hard drive asthat collecting ground so that
I have lots of space.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Wow, I never thought of that.
So you actually have peoplefigure out where all their
photos are digitally stored andthen you're going to have them
systematically go into a harddrive.
That's a physical hard drive inyour hand, so it's not like to
another source, digital source.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Got one plugged in right here.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
OK, so it's small.
It's like a small, like what isthat About?
An eight by or four by four boxor something yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, size of a wallet.
The advantage of using anexternal hard drive is most of
our computers these days areactually not big enough to
handle our whole photo library.
You know, computers are gettingsmaller and smaller.
Price point doesn't seem to getsmaller and smaller and it's
expensive to upgrade to have alot of space on our computers
now, and so a hard external harddrive will run you about $100.
(10:12):
And it's going to have a lot ofspace.
So you know you can bringeverything to it.
And the big key I want toemphasize on this collection
process, where we're gatheringeverything.
So we're not even going toworry about duplicates, so
you're not going to spend themental energy thinking about Ooh
, is this item on my phone thesame as what I had in Dropbox or
(10:35):
the same as what was on thatold computer?
You're just gathering a hundredpercent of all the things,
because once we get all of ourphotos in one place, that's when
we can use technology to startcleaning up our mess.
We can let it help us, but wegot to get them all into one
place first so we can really getour arms around the project.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
So when we were talking about doing this episode
, I kind of looked on just myphone, and on my phone I have
just shy of 30,000 photos and2,700 videos, and I keep getting
nasty grams that these are notbacked up, that I needed to buy
(11:11):
more iCloud storage and I feellike I'm gambling here, and so
for a hundred dollars, I canhave the peace of mind by being
able to shift all of those over.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yes, and you don't have to remove them from your
phone.
Look at my phone.
Mine has 24,763 photos.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
I see that yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
There's nothing wrong with that number.
People share their number withme, always with the same like
shame or guilt behind it.
There's nothing wrong with thatnumber.
Those are memories, blessingsin your life that you've chosen
to document, and it's great thatyou have 30,000 photos on your
phone.
It only feels overwhelmingbecause you don't have a system
(11:52):
right.
You don't have the confidencethat, like you know, they're
backed up or you know what to dowith them.
It feels overwhelming right nowbecause you're worried that
they're that you're gambling,yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah, yeah, I'm gambling for sure.
So once we have downloaded allthese digital photos from all
our different stuff, what do youdo then?
What's the next step after that?
You've gathered everybody.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Yes, I've gathered everything and I've made a huge
mess on that hard drive.
The next thing I do is runduplicate finding software, so
it will look at the whole messwe put on that hard drive.
The next thing I do is runduplicate finding software, so
it will look at the whole messwe put on that hard drive and
evaluate where the overlapexists.
And it is smart enough to belooking for visual matches, so
(12:38):
it's looking at the photo itselfto determine if they match.
And it's smart enough to keepthe best version with the most
resolution.
And it's automatic.
You just click a button and itevaluates everything.
And it's not scary because youget to review the results and
confirm along the way before anychanges are made.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
So this is it like an AI right?
That's going to it likepredates Technology.
That's going to it likepredates technology that's going
to pick the best picture itpredates that, but yes, it's.
Ai.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
I've been using them for years.
There's different ones for Macand PC, but they're very
affordable and so valuable tothink to have to go one by one
for all your photos just takeforever.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
And are you finding they're pretty accurate in
picking that best photo?
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah, you are in control of the logic that it's
using and so I tell it I wantyou to keep the best resolution
or the earliest create date orthe newest create date you can
control all of that or if it'sin an album or if it's been
favorited, I want those to takepriority.
It's really, it's really coolsoftware.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Is it going to like determine?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
like, show the one, only the ones where I look
skinny, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
That's where AI is going to take us.
I guess I'm asking for too muchthere.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Okay, so then we've gotten rid of all of our
duplicates.
And what do we do next?
So then I get it.
I run it through a sortingprogram that gets it all
chronologically, so that is nolonger in folders that say like
old iPhone one, uh, googledownload, you know.
I get it all shuffled into onecohesive system that's just
folders by year and month, andthen it looks great, even though
(14:25):
there's junk in there.
We cleaned up nothing, we didn'tdelete the blurry pictures and
the screenshots.
It just feels so much betterbecause now it's in a structure
and then we can start makingbackup copies.
Then we could put it in a cloudservice where we maybe have
some benefits like facialrecognition and search.
So getting that one copy ofyour entire photo library gives
(14:50):
us the freedom to then take itplaces that are going to help us
.
Maybe we upload it into GooglePhotos and then it can name all
the faces and it can find allthe pictures we want just by
searching the word dog.
But doing that work, getting itall together, makes it so much
more enjoyable when you get itinto the service that you're
going to use.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
And then, how often do we need to keep up with
downloading into this device andrunning that software again?
How often do you suggest thatpeople do that?
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Once you build the system, you don't have to do too
much maintenance.
I download the most recent yearonce a year to my hard drive,
so I just add 2023 to the harddrive and I don't really deal
with duplicates too much now,because we're just using our
phone to take pictures, so it'scoming from one place, but I'm
(15:41):
taking it from the phone andputting it on the hard drive.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Okay, now you have this method called the decide
once method, with photographs.
What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
What does that mean?
So I apply that to when I'm outat an event, taking the
pictures, like one picture isenough to remember the event.
You can take absolutely.
You can take more pictures, butwhen your son is blowing out
the candles on the birthday cake, you don't need 25 pictures of
that, you can just take one.
So when we just take onepicture, you're deciding once
that's the picture, and then itmakes everything easier down the
(16:23):
road.
Now, when I'm making a calendarat the end of the year or
making a photo book or a photogift, I only have the one
picture.
I already decided that's what Ilike and that's what I'm going
to use.
So, yeah, I call it one anddone.
That's hard for people morethan others.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, I think that would take a little getting used
to, cause we're so like youknow, the ones of us that grew
up in where we took a camerawith us and had to develop the
film, that we take all thesepictures because we want the
perfect one and stuff.
So you know, to kind of getmore.
You know specific, moreintentional with.
You, know what the photo is.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
But think of what that stems from.
We couldn't see the picturesthat we were taking on film,
right, so we had to take extrasto guarantee that it turned out
the eyes weren't closed orsomething we can see right now
that we got that picture of himblowing out the candles on the
birthday cake so then we canstop.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Now, I'm one of these people that sometimes some of
my pictures are live photos andsome are just photo photos and I
don't know how I do that allthe time.
But do you have to handle thoselive photos?
That kind of move it alwaysreminds me of like a Harry
Potter episode with thephotographs and people are
moving in the photographs.
(17:42):
Do you handle those differently?
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I personally don't love live photos because what
they are is a photo plus a lowresolution video.
That's what they are, and so tome, that feels like well, now I
got double the stuff for everyphoto that I take.
If I leave Apple, it nowbecomes a photo and a video, and
I got to deal with that and I'mI'm I'm fine with just having
(18:08):
the photos.
That's how I've always been.
We've always had just stillphotos.
We've been okay.
If I want video footage, I'mgoing to take a video.
It's like a different to me.
They're two different things.
Some people love live photosand to them absolutely keep
using it, but for me, I feltlike it was going to be another
decision.
I was going to have to makemore clutter that I'm going to
have to deal with, and so Iturned it off and I don't use
(18:28):
live photos personally.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Okay, okay.
Now the other thing is um, so,once we get organized, kind of
going back to that organization,um, how, how do you recommend
that people get better atdeleting the extra as they go
along?
Do you recommend that they kindof do that?
Is it?
Is that a daily, weekly?
What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yes, I'm glad that you qualified that with once.
We get everything into oneplace first, because I do think
that's the priority, becausethen, once you have it in one
place, then cleanup is moreeffective.
You're cleaning up your actualcollection rather than just this
little bandaid of cleaning uppart of my phone or cleaning up
part of a cloud service.
So, yeah, everything'sorganized.
One great, then.
(19:13):
I think cleanup can be the nextstage.
And one great habit I call thedaily delete, where you make it
smaller by just searchingtoday's date in your library.
So today you can type in March28th and just see all the March
28th content all the way back tothe beginning of your library,
and you can clean that up oneday at a time.
So that might feel too big if.
(19:34):
If you have a really largelibrary, the smaller version of
that would be like just reviewwhat happened today, delete
those screenshots you just tookthat when you were at the
grocery store or the thing thatyou texted to your kid.
You can, you just need to getinto a practice.
Whether it's daily, weekly,monthly, you decide what works
for you, but you need to getinto a practice of review or
(19:55):
else these things just kind ofspiral way out of control.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yes, absolutely, yeah , okay, so let's start talking
about kind of some of the bestproducts.
So, now that we have everythingin a central location and we've
done our deleting and we'vekind of fine-tuned everything,
and we've done our deleting andwe've kind of fine-tuned
everything, what are some of thebest printing options?
And you know the affordableones, the, you know ones that
(20:23):
are like keepsake quality.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
What does that look like?
Great question.
My favorite for ease andaffordability is Chatbooks.
It's an app that you downloadon your phone.
You pick your favorite photosfrom your camera roll and very
(20:47):
affordably get them into a book.
And then, for the more keepsakequality or archival quality,
the company that I like iscalled Printique.
They are owned by Adorama.
That's a professional cameracompany out of Brooklyn.
They have the more archivalquality printing.
You're going to pay a littlebit more and get a much fancier
book that's going to last you alittle longer.
(21:08):
So I personally use both in myfamily.
I use chat books to get monthlybooks.
I pick my 30 favorites.
They come immediately.
They come immediately, theycost $7 and my kids can do
whatever they want with themLook at them real quick, get the
photos in their hands and thenonce a year I make what I call a
family yearbook where I took myfavorite 300 photos or so from
(21:28):
the year and I put them in anarchival quality.
One of those.
That's what I would keep on theshelf and that's what I want to
carry long-term.
One of those.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
That's what I would keep on the shelf and that's
what I want to carry long term.
Oh, that's.
That's kind of like a niceChristmas gift to the family.
Now, if you have multiplechildren, do you recommend
multiple copies, is it?
It does it get more affordable,or is buying two copies or
three copies just as expensive?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I made the decision that I was only going to make
one copy because I just I didn'twant to house that many books
and make that big of aninvestment without really
knowing what my kids'preferences are going to be when
they leave the house.
My kids are 11 and nine andthey enjoy these books right now
.
I don't know that they're goingto want a whole bookshelf of
(22:20):
them by the time they're 18 totake with them.
If that that time they do, Ican absolutely print additional
copies, or they can take mycopies, maybe, but I didn't want
to commit to buying threecopies of every book forever, so
I did not purchase copies formy kids gotcha, I guess.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I guess it can rotate me um now.
You also do video albums.
Talk about that and I don'tthink I've utilized that.
(23:04):
You know, like videos, likeI'll take them, we'll look at
them, but I never thought of avideo album.
So how does that work?
Speaker 2 (23:12):
yes, this started four or five years ago.
For me, I thought it would befun to make a video after a
family trip.
So during the trip I wasshooting video footage and when
we got home I set it to musicand I made like a five minute
recap video and my kids loved it.
(23:33):
So they ask every single trip,can you make a video?
And so I started that practice.
First I had these videos and Iwas thinking how can I get this
in a format my kids could enjoy?
My kids don't have phones yetor devices, so I found what I
call a video book or devices.
(23:56):
So I found what is I call avideo book.
You can buy them through mywebsite, but it's basically a
little screen but that's all itdoes is play the video.
So it's like a flash drivewhere I loaded the videos on it
and then my kids can open it andhit, play and just watch those.
But they love that book.
They show it to all theirlittle friends.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
The babysitter who comes over they play these
videos for them, and so it'sreally fun to watch them enjoy
it rather than just being hiddenon so and just so our listeners
know, we're going to have thelinks for all this stuff, how to
get to your products andeverything you know, so you'll
be able to to find that.
But those video albums, sothey're just like other albums,
(24:32):
they're individual.
For an individual video, right,is there special?
I put putting I put several.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yeah, I put several videos on it, so I have maybe 10
videos like a playlist thatthey then watch.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yeah, yeah, oh, there's actual playlists.
I like that too, so it's notlike you have to have like 10
different uh, these video, yeahsomething I started buying one a
year.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Just there's the family yearbook and then there's
the video book, and if I coulddo it differently now that many
years have passed, I would justmake like family videos volume
one, load it till it was full,because now I have a lot of
these books laying around and mykids still enjoy them, so it's
fine.
But I would probably do it at alittle larger scale, not so
(25:18):
strict, once per year.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
I love that and sometimes, like you know, again,
I think this is a change thatI'm going to make.
Going forward is to take morevideo and less pictures.
So it just takes a single videoto kind of get the whole gist
of a, an event, you know, andit's more interactive, but I
guess it's it's been that Ididn't know quite how to share
(25:40):
it or you know how to view it.
But to have a book, like anactual physical thing where you
can load it into, I love that.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, the first step is making the keepsake video.
I guess you could call it right, cause they're not just clips
from my iPhone that my kids arewatching.
I, you know, set it to musicand I clipped it down to be the
to like, fit the music, likeit's kind of a piece of art.
I love it, I love it.
I do have a course teaching howto make those custom videos.
(26:11):
If that is something thatinterests you and you don't have
to put them on a book, you canput them on YouTube, you can put
it on Facebook, you can dowhatever you want with those
custom videos, but I do lovehaving the books for my kids.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
You have even just a separate course.
That really just specific tohow to do that.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yep, oh, I love that.
Is that something that somebodycould gift to someone else?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yes, yeah, all of my courses are available, yep, any
courses available as a giftcertificate or the book.
The video book itself could begifted.
My favorite one that I did wasI've got two favorites.
One was for grandma's 90thbirthday.
They recorded videos of all thegrandkids saying happy birthday
, grandma, and sharing a memorythat they loved of her, and then
(26:53):
, at 90 years old, she got thebook not super tech savvy All
she had to do was open it andthen watch all of her grandkids
talking to her.
That one was great.
And then I did a similar onefor Father's Day, where he
didn't know.
The mom filmed videos of thekids doing similar messages and
I thought that was cute.
So, yes, they are great gifts,no matter the tech level.
(27:15):
My kids can use these astoddlers, or grandma and her
90th birthday can use it.
They don't require any techsavvy.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
To view, it To put it together.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
It's just a play button.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, okay, I love that.
All right, um, so now that wehave all of our digital stuff
organized, we we know how we'regoing to be printing it out or
making books and all that stuff.
Now we have that closet that wewere talking about, where we
have the boxes of the old photos.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Yeah, I thought we were just going to ignore the
closet keep the door closed.
Yes, that is its own project.
Yes, but it's actually can bereally fun work, just as
organizing your digital photoscan be fun work because you're
unearthing old memories youhaven't seen in a long time.
That box in the closet has somehidden gems in there too.
(28:08):
So my advice is the same whenyou tackle a physical or
physical photo project, and thatis to try to make it smaller.
So instead of viewing the wholecloset, say, well, this month
I'm tackling this box or how canyou make it smaller, just to
make it feel achievable.
And then my advice is to kindof sort into really high-level
(28:31):
categories as you're tackling abox.
At first I have a pile that'strash Like this is a photo of a
tree.
I don't know any backstory onthe tree, there's no people in
the photo, there's no notes.
I don't need to keep the photoof the tree.
The doubles and the triples wegot for free when we developed
those can go in the trash pile.
So the first pass through a boxI'm really just looking for
(28:55):
what doesn't even matter, whatcan I throw away, and often
that's most of the box.
But you're left with a stackLike these matter to me and that
with those I move on todigitizing so you can hire
somebody to scan your photos.
I offer those services.
You could buy a scanner to doit yourself at home.
I have a course that teachesyou how to do it.
(29:16):
But then, when you'redigitizing them, you add them
right into your hub with all ofyour digital stuff that you
organized, and once they're inthere, they get the same tech
benefits.
So the facial recognition willidentify the faces on those
scans.
You can search, like I saidearlier, for the word dog, and
it works just on those scans,like it did with your digital
(29:39):
photos.
And so that's when it getsreally fun.
You get all of these picturesfrom your childhood and your
family into this and you canmake videos, you can make books,
you can share things withfamily easier.
When they're in a box in yourcloset, not much you can do with
it, but once you get themdigital, you can really do a lot
(30:00):
.
It's really fun once you getthere.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Oh, I like that and I like how, again, you have
another course that kind ofhelps with just really that
specific thing of how to onceyou have them gathered they have
to have them gathered, and thenyou're going to teach how to
scan and and what you can dowith those scan photos.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Yes, yep, the technical stuff, like if you
want to change dates and youwant to rename them, and the
settings to use on the scanner,all that.
Yeah, my courses are all likeseparate projects, because the
back to the thing I said at thebeginning is you have to focus
on one thing at a time or you'renever going to to finish this
project.
So I have a course that tacklesthe digital organizing where I
(30:39):
think you should start.
That's called backup bootcamp.
That's my most popular course.
But then if you decide you wantto make photo books, there's a
course on that.
If you want to make customvideos, like we talked about,
there's a course on that.
If you want to scan, there's acourse on that.
So, one at a time, break theproject down.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
I like that.
Now you know again, followingyou on social media, you had
talked one time about Apple, theApple journal app and how we
can use that with our photos,and I bet a lot of people don't
even know that there's an applejournal app it's brand new.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
It's brand new.
It just came out december,january.
It just came out a few monthsago and, uh, it's pretty neat.
It has prompts in there becauseit, you know, has access on
your phone to see when you tooka lot of photos when you did a
workout, and it will prompt youLike, would you like to journal
(31:32):
about this hike that you did atXYZ location?
And you can add in photos.
You can add journaling.
The nice thing is Apple'sreally big on privacy, so all of
this is encrypted and it's notaccessible to other people.
It's all on your device, foryour eyes only, and so it's.
That's great.
(31:52):
Apple's big on privacy.
It's just in its firstiteration, so I hope it will
continue to improve.
But yeah, they just launched it.
It's free, it's on your iPhoneautomatically and you can play
around with it.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
You know, as we're talking and stuff like that, you
know it doesn't seem sodaunting.
You know the way you'redescribing, you know breaking it
out, doing different parts ofthis that allow us to put it all
together.
It really isn't.
But you know, I don't thinkpeople realize there is a real
psychological benefit toorganizing your photographs.
Yeah, what have you seen whenyou work with clients?
What do you see as the impact?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Oh, the weight relief off the shoulders of lifting
this burden of I'm always afraidI'm going to lose my photos or
I don't know what to do withthem, always afraid I'm going to
lose my photos or I don't knowwhat to do with them.
That is such a psychologicalgift because then photos become
fun again.
Like you can do all these funthings we're talking about feels
like you can't do it whenyou're just worried about having
(32:55):
30,000 on your phone and notknowing what to do with them.
So the that is a really bigemotional component.
I've also heard from a lot ofclients saying like I watched my
girls looking at our Google Hubor our Apple TV and they were
seeing all these memories fromtheir childhood that they had
never seen before.
And so it's watching yourfamily enjoy the memories that
(33:16):
legacy component is really sucha gift too.
So it all starts with justgetting those digital photos
organized and it is a lot ofwork.
I mean I know this sounds likereally fun and uplifting and
easy and conversation.
It's going to take time, butthat work is so worth it because
then you get to do the funstuff.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
So what type of time commitment are we talking about
when we start to, you know,download and organize um?
What type, what type of timecommitment should someone really
expect?
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, it varies dramatically.
So my backup bootcamp course isthe one that gets your digital
photos organized and backed up.
Um, it's wildly different foreveryone because it depends on
your computer speed, yourinternet speed, your tech
savviness, the number of photosyou have.
But the average student takesabout a month to do the project.
(34:12):
Now, that's not activelyworking for a month.
There's so much waiting.
You run the duplicate finder.
It runs overnight.
You come check it the next dayor you download a batch from the
website.
You come back check it in acouple hours.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
But start to finish.
I would set aside about a monthof just working on it little by
little.
Now, your bootcamp, is thatlike a one day thing, or is that
like you go several timesduring like that month process?
Speaker 2 (34:36):
It's a self paced course.
So as soon as you buy it youhave access to all the lessons
and you move at your own pace.
So the nice thing aboutfollowing a course is there's
lessons broken out so you cansay, oh, life's getting busy,
I'm on this lesson, I'm going tocome back to it in two months
and then pick up from where youleft off.
And then also you get access tofuture updates.
So the reality is tech isconstantly changing and I have
(35:00):
to go into that course andupdate.
Here's what the duplicatefinder looks like now and here's
what this cloud service lookslike now.
So it's I call it a choose yourown adventure.
There's a path for pc users, apath for mac users and you get
to pick from different popularcloud services and kind of make
your choice and then followthrough boot camp with those
choices.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
I would think to get like a buddy that was going
through it at the same time, tokind of keep you back and forth.
Where are you today?
Where?
Because I could see like youcould easily like keep putting
it on the back burner and thisis really meant to get you
through this, not taking overyour lifetime you know time
(35:41):
commitment, but a let's do alittle bit at a time to get you
there.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
I love that.
That's huge.
And I've had people use me asthat accountability partner.
I have one-on-one consults andthey'll book one a month and
then I give them homework.
By next consult you got to, youhave to have finished this, you
know.
So I've had people use me orpay me to be that accountability
partner.
I love it If it's one of yourfriends and maybe you guys get
together and work on it a littlebit together and then you have
(36:09):
homework and it can make it morefun to have it be more social,
for sure.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
I think by using you, you could highlight very early
on like, hey, this is, maybethis could make it go easier.
You know, you can kind of, youknow, coach through.
It's Just like going to the gymIf you don't know how to use
the equipment.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
It's not going to be as effective I like that, yes, I
do offer something called asupport group.
Cause you can't really findinformation about it on my
website, cause I only invitepeople who are in the core
students to come and do it, buttwice a year.
I do a support group and it's agroup of like 10 of us on zoom.
We meet once a week for sixweeks and we all work through it
(36:48):
to get there and I screen sharewith everyone individually so I
can check on their work andgive them personalized
suggestions.
Like you said, maybe you shoulddo this differently.
It's it's pretty hands-on, butsometimes that's what it takes
to get across the finish line.
Sometimes a self-paced coursejust doesn't work for everybody.
They need a little more pushingacross the finish line.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
You have self-paced courses, you have these type of
courses, you have boot camps,support groups, one-on-one
sessions.
I mean you really offer a lotof different opportunities.
You know, I love the videoclass that you offer, just the
digital organizing the backupboot camp, the support groups
(37:29):
and again, with the supportgroups, you have to be actively
going through your other coursesto be part of that, which makes
complete sense because youbring someone from the outside
and it would be chaos becausethey don't know where.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Yeah, they need to have the videos to reference
what we're learning together.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, what type of cost are they looking at?
Just to get started.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Bootcamp is $99.
It is a one-time cost, not asubscription, and you get access
to the future updates, like Isaid, and then all the other
courses are less than that.
So I call them fast classes.
The video one is a fast class.
That means it's just one videoand it's $15.
So I tried to keep my thingsvery affordable so that when you
(38:12):
feel inspired to work on one ofthese projects, you can jump
right in and do it when you'refeeling motivated, because the
motivation is the key.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
What was one of your biggest success stories with
helping to organize somebody.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Oh my gosh, my biggest one, memorable to you.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
You don't have to be named or anything.
No, I would never name names.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
but I had somebody who had 4.7 million files when
we started because she had madeall these backup copies and she
didn't trust any of them.
So she had 10 hard drives allwith portions of different
things on them and I so Istarted with 4.7 million files
and I got her down to about300,000.
(38:53):
That's her finished library.
She takes lots of pictures.
She had a big library but itwasn't 4.7 million.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
That was a big project.
That one took a year.
Okay, so if you can get someonelike that organized, you can
deal with the regulators of us.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
That puts your 30,000 in perspective.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Yeah, if it makes you feel better.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
my average students have 30 to 40,000 on their phone
, so that's a very normal numberthat you have.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
So what is your best piece of advice to someone in
midlife when it comes toorganizing their photos?
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Just start.
You have to just start, pickthe one project.
Like I said, my advice is tostart with digital organizing
and just start chip away at it,cause once the digital stuff's
in order, you can move on tophysical, you can move on to
making books, you can move on tomaking videos, whatever you
want to do with it.
I worked on a really fun legacyproject for my mother-in-law
(39:51):
years ago where she had a wholeroom in her house that's full of
scrapbooks and pictures andloose photos.
And she turned to me.
She has three boys and she saidI don't think they're going to
want any of this, I don't knowwhat to do with it.
And we worked on it over acouple of years.
We scanned everything in and Iturned it into eight books.
(40:13):
They're chapters of her life.
So it's like her childhood, hermarriage, her three kids each
get a book.
The second marriage and thenshe had two really, really
transformational trips in herlife a trip around the world
when she graduated high schooland a trip around the U?
S when she was nine and herparents took her to school.
So they had she had me makededicated books for those two
trips.
So these eight albums sit inher living room, shows them to
(40:37):
everybody, and I know she'sgetting a ton of enjoyment out
of them already.
But I know when she is nolonger with us it's a lot easier
for us to keep those eightbooks than it is to keep that
whole room that was full of allthe scrapbooks we started.
So start one step at a time,but that could be your end
picture of you have just a muchmanageable, more meaningful
(40:59):
thing to hand down to your kids.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yeah, Okay, we ask all of our guests this question
what is your superpower?
Speaker 2 (41:09):
My about page on miss freddiecom says photo
organizing is my superpower.
So that, as may be obvious fromtoday's conversation, but I'd
say on one level further, beingdecisive about what to keep and
throw away, I think is asuperpower because I've learned
that people aren't good at that.
That's why we have 30,000 onour phone.
(41:30):
It's because we can't decidebetween things, and my years as
a photographer really honed thatskill and so I am very decisive
, which makes it easier to getmy books done.
I make the decisions.
I adhere to that done is betterthan perfect philosophy.
And I get my's done.
I make the decisions.
I adhere to that done is betterthan perfect philosophy.
And I get.
I get my stuff done.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
This has really beenenlightening and definitely
inspiring and I hope ourlisteners reach out to you to
start some of these courses.
It's important and it willreally put that peace of mind
that we were talking about.
But before we go, I also wantedto do a big shout out to some
of our newest listeners inDanbury, connecticut, sheboygan,
(42:14):
wisconsin, lake Zurich,illinois and Yucca Valley,
california.
I love that new people arealways kind of joining the
podcast.
Definitely share this with afriend, share this episode in
particular, with some friendsand, you know, start to do this
together as like a group and,you know, take some of these
(42:36):
courses and stuff like that.
You know what a gift to eachother.
And again, I think some ofthese courses for for friends
and stuff what a great gift thatwould be.
So, thank you so, so much.
You can always find us on thepositively midlife podcastcom,
so sign up for our newsletters.
(42:57):
We're going to be starting somenewsletters soon and you can
see all of our obsessions andblogs and stuff that we're
making there.
But thank you so much, msFreddie.
I think this is really going toinspire a lot of people to get
started.
Thank you for everything.
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