It Would Have Taken My Mom 400 Hours To Save Our Family Memories... How I Did It In 15 Minutes!

No one has ever accused my mom of being lazy!

She’s a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. At 53, she runs a small farm, teaches nursing classes in several states, trains for marathons, and still works 3 days of the week at a family practice clinic...

And she calls that “retirement!”

About 4 years ago after dad died, she started another little “side-project” — she started digging through an attic FULL of old family memories, trying to sort and scan all of our family photos and home videos onto her computer.

Her original goal was to surprise us kids with digital keepsakes of childhood and family memories for Christmas in 2014.

With her “spare time” (which is a word I don’t think she really understands), she figured out how to hook up a scanner to her computer so she could scan each photo — well over 1,200 of them.

After sorting, she would scan the pictures one at a time with the scanner, and then muddle her way through Photoshop to fix all the faded colors and retouch each image. Then she would back up each file to a thumb drive.

It was taking her 20 minutes to scan and retouch every single photo. Guys, let me be clear here — my mom HAS no spare time to waste.

She wasn’t even half way done when I found her crying on her living room floor.

She had discovered that to her horror, she had been scanning everything wrong the whole time, and now had to start over. Everything was scanned at the wrong resolution and couldn’t be printed without looking blurry.

...and she hasn’t even opened the box of home videos yet — the thought of digitizing and editing dozens of VHS and camcorder tapes was completely overwhelming.

The project had gone from daunting to downright impossible.

Does that sound familiar?

Between starting over with the photos and transferring all the videos, we figured out it would easily take over 400 hours to finish the project when factoring in the scanning, retouching, saving, backing up files, uploading to the cloud... not even counting the process of watching, digitizing and editing videos... and then figuring out how to put them on DVDs.

We all have such grand plans with these kind of projects, but the reality is: Who has that kind of time and energy?

But the funniest (and saddest) part?

The entire project could have been finished up in 15 minutes — 4 years ago!

You see, I found out about a company called iMemories. iMemories takes all of your old home movies, photos and slides and converts them to digital for you.

When I heard what they do, I immediately thought of my mom and her impossible project.

Here’s how iMemories works:

Is it worth it?

I remembered visiting my mom one day when she was just starting to dig through boxes of photos. I found my mom at her kitchen table with tears in her eyes, holding a photograph in her hand...

At first, I thought something was wrong. But then I saw that it was an old photo of her mom and I, when I was less than a year old. My grandma passed away when I was 6 years old, so it’s been awhile. But seeing that old memory brought everything back.

Together we had a good cry. What a happy memory.

And that’s when I understood WHY my mom was working so hard to save these memories.

All those once-in-a-lifetime moments are worth keeping. They’re worth saving. My kids will get to laugh and see me being held by their great grandma, and our family’s history will live on.

Is it safe?

iMemories is the world’s most trusted Home Movie and Photo Digitization Company.

Over the past decade+, they’ve helped over 500,000 families digitize their treasured memories and have uploaded 12 MILLION photos and videos...

What’s truly amazing to me is that they’ve never lost or damaged anyone’s precious memories.

Sorry, I had to put that in bold caps because it’s so important. These memories are priceless. Trusting them to any random company would be silly.

That’s why giant companies like Walgreens, Best Buy, Kodak, The UPS Store, and pretty much every other “home video and photo saver” company uses iMemories directly. There isn’t another company on earth who I’d trust more with my family memories.

How does it work?

Remember how much time and effort it took my mom to save just a portion of our family’s videos and photos? iMemories will do it all FOR you... and usually in about a week.

To start the process, they’ll ship you a crush-proof, water-proof, shock-resistant box with a pre-paid shipping label, and you just put your old cassettes, videos, photos, and everything else into the box...

It takes maybe 15 minutes to put everything in the SafeShip box, and there’s no need to sort, label, or organize anything!

Then you send your SafeShip Kit to iMemories (using the pre-paid shipping label they give you) and iMemories will convert everything to digital files, upload them into a PRIVATE “cloud” that can be accessed from anywhere.

That’s it. SUPER simple.

And once they’re done, you get all your originals back for safe keeping.

It is certainly worth repeating that even with over 500,000 customers served, they’ve never lost or damaged a package. Not once.

So your memories will get there safe, and be uploaded to your own private, completely secure “cloud” within days. The “cloud” part is really cool. You’re able to access the files from anywhere — your computer, smartphone or tablet! You never have to worry about your computer crashing, misplacing any of your memories, or protecting videos and photos in the event of a disaster, like a house fire or flood.

You can also easily share files online with your family and friends.

What formats can they work with?

iMemories can convert almost ANY kind of old video or picture format, like:

• 16mm, 8mm and Super8 film reels
• VHS tapes
• All camcorder tapes (VHS-C, 8mm/Hi8 and MiniDV)
• All photo formats (prints, slides and negatives)

Even though they have the best technicians and equipment in the industry, they’re still surprisingly affordable. (You can check out current pricing HERE.)

As a gift to my mom, I ended up using iMemories to digitize ALL of our family’s precious memories, and we couldn’t be happier with the results! She told me it was the best gift she’s ever received.

So if you’re in the same boat, or you know someone who is, I HIGHLY recommend checking out iMemories.

iMemories Reviews

It may be helpful to know that I’m not the only one who’s had a good experience with iMemories. I went looking for Facebook comments and here are a few that I found: