Countdown to 2010 – Time to Clean House!

We’ve been cleaning up all the Christmas mess this week, but I always leave the trees up until New Year’s Day.  It makes New Year’s Eve seem just a little more festive.  But I’m not done cleaning, it’s time to clean my digital house!

First let’s look at how to get our photo files cleaned out, then tomorrow we’ll talk about how to clean up our computers and systems so we’re ready to go for another year of scrapping!

CLEANING OUT YOUR PHOTOS

• Delete the duds! Do you just dump everything from your camera into a folder and call it done?  Then you need to go into every folder from 2009 and delete everything you don’t need.  The out-of-focus, decapitated, back view of your loved ones can surely meet the big recycling bin in the sky, right?
• Name them properly – do you have files named “BetsysBDgaragesalekittens” because you name everything off a single download the same?  Time to rename these to something that makes sense, so in three years you can find the photo you’re looking for!  There are many renaming programs available to do this in batches quickly and easily! Here’s a great one recommended by CNET.
• Scan your hard copies – we all have them.  Newspaper articles, snaps that people have sent us; odds and ends that we’ve been meaning to scan and archive.  No time like the present!
• Back photos off to disc. Yes, I know you’re using Mozy to back up your drives (aren’t you?), but it’s not a bad idea to put a hard copy somewhere too.  I like to burn my photos a month at a time to DVD and give them to hubby to take to his office.  That way should something happen to the house, we’ll have an extra copy off site.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend, and are enjoying some downtime this week.  We’ve had a couple of lazy days, and are not looking forward to getting back to our regular schedule.  How are you preparing to greet the new year?

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