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Photo Scanning: I Cry Uncle

by theminimalistmom |
photo albums and box of loose photos

First: shameless request for votes. I’ve been nominated as one of 30 Top Vancouver Mom Blogs! The voting window is May 2 – 9. If you like what you read here I would love your support. You can vote here.

Now back to more minimal-izing, decluttering and, today, where procrastination will take you.

Procrastination costs.

I started this photo project at the beginning of the year. I wanted to cut my three photo albums to one and scan most of the photos. The plan was to chip away at it slowly, spending a few hours a week sorting and then scanning the photos. I was already well acquainted with scanning photos after doing about 200 in one day for a family project a year and a half ago.

Here is how far I got before this turned into Project Dread:

Sorting – 4 hours

This phase was fun. I spent two 2 hour sessions pulling all my photos out of the books and sorting into scan worthy and not scan worthy. I would say this cut my photos by 1/3. Surprised how many almost identical pictures I kept. Same photo, slightly different angle, do I really need four of them?

In between sorting I snapped picture of old pictures on my iPhone and sent them to friends for a good laugh. That made the time quite enjoyable and it was fun to share the memories again.

Photos that I already had a digital version of and that weren’t photo album worthy were tossed.

sorted and waiting for the scanner…

Scanning – 4 hours

This is where the wheels fell off.

We have a very good home scanner. Great resolution and user friendly. Like most scanners, it takes some time. The scanner has auto-feed and I was hoping to just leave a stack of photos in the feeder and have them all scan. But the photos are too small to use the auto-feed function. So that meant putting them on the glass, hitting the scan buttons and waiting. I was trying to do this while multitasking some household chores. Put a photo on the glass, close lid, hit scan buttons, walk away and flip the laundry. Now repeat with other chores.

After one afternoon I had barely made a dent in my pile of photos. I knew this would be the case but it was disheartening to see. I planned to tackle it the next week.

Next week came and went and the project sat and sat.

Whenever I thought of carving out some time for it I got a bit sullen and resentful. Not how I wanted to spend my afternoon. I would rather clean a bathroom (and I really don’t like to clean) than spend a dozen more afternoons photo scanning.

So I cried Uncle.

I am paying to have my photos scanned. With our looming move and a list of more pressing chores, and the fact that we won’t be bringing a scanner with us to the Isle of Man, I’m outsourcing this job to more capable hands for somewhere between $100-$150 dollars.

After a bit of research I chose PhotoScanning.ca. There was a local outfit but they charged five times as much. I’m not overly concerned with quality because these aren’t photos that will be framed and displayed in our home. We’re keeping them for posterity. If some day, hopefully far in the future, they’re needed for a photo montage at my memorial, well, sorry I got all cheap on low resolution on you family.

I’m trying to keep it frugal and not blow our finances during move time but, sometimes it pays to just get a job done quickly and cleanly. We’re closing in on almost $3000 in proceeds from selling nursery furniture and computer equipment for the move. The proceeds from selling the glider should cover this expenditure. I’ll give a review and details of pricing once I get my photos back.

Anyone else have Dread Projects on their backs? What are they and do you have outsource options or will you soldier on?

UPDATE: I used photoscanning.ca and while I did receive my scanned photos I never got my originals back. I would not use this particular service again but I would outsource photo scanning.

  • How did you find it with photoscanning.ca? I ask because I sent photos for work to them a month ago and haven’t heard from him since. Their number is disconnected and none of my e-mails have been returned. Did you experience any of this?

  • Pingback: What To Do With Old Photos | The Minimalist Mom

  • I think it’s completely worthwhile to pay someone to do something, especially if you have the money and it’s causing a lot of stress and anxiety or will save a lot of time. I’m cringeing because I agreed to pay someone $75 to till our garden. My husband is busy working on our house, and I really want to get it planted, plus it’s pretty big and would take forever to till it with the small tiller, so I guess it’s worth it.

    Just the peace of mind of knowing something’s done can be worth it. Good luck with the move!

  • I just went through this with CDs. I had about 400-500 CDs and I wanted to put them all in my iPod before I moved so I could get rid of them.

    All other aspects of my minimalizing went fine. I got down to so few possessions that I moved everything in one pickup truck with room to spare. But ripping the CDs was absolutely infuriating, requiring my attention every 2-5 minutes while trying to pack, sort and clean.

    It took a few weeks but when I got it done I was able to sell my CDs and make about $300. The funny thing? I haven’t listened to my iPod even once since doing it.

    Oy. 🙂

    • Burned 100+ CDs and I found it infuriating too.
      My husband emptied out a storage locker of his a few years ago and he had 1000+ CDs. They sat in our living for a while, he burned just a handful of the ones he really wanted, and then he sold the collection on Craigslist to a guy that had a used CD and DVD store.

  • I’m outsourcing photo scanning. Waiting to see what you’ve scanned and I’ll take copies before sending in my own photos. No need to pay twice! We should pool old family photos and the six of us can divide the cost. Very frugal.

  • Voted!

    I would love to outsource bathroom cleaning, but alas I am too cheap to do so. Not to mention it’s an ongoing thing. Otherwise, no dreadful projects lurking around here, just the ongoing purge-a-thon. 🙂

    • Are you in downtown Vancouver by any chance? We have fantastic cleaners that charge $50/hr (for two of them) and are extremely efficient in their work. We have them in and out of our 1850 sq ft apartment in 2 hours by eliminating redundant work (such as cleaning the kitchen, since I clean it up after every meal, or cleaning the guest bedroom/bathroom when it hasn’t been used). They will do jobs as short as 1 hour.

      • Yes, I am! I’ll keep it in mind, but I am a bit too obsessive to have someone else clean my house. I’m the annoying person that would clean after the cleaners have left. Boo. Hope you are enjoying the fantastic weather!

    • Thanks for your vote!!

      Ditto on bathrooms. I’m actually excited to move to the UK and get a place with just one bathroom.

  • I’m currently using ScanSnap to scan all the paper I’ve kept for 56 years. When I run across something that doesn’t work well with ScanSnap, I throw it in a special container for my daughter to scan. I have no idea why she doesn’t mind scanning photographs, but she’s making great headway in getting them done and I haven’t had to do even one. ScanSnap is fun; slow scanning is hell.

    • Have to look up ScanSnap. We’ll probably end up getting a small printer/scanner after we move. The one we have right now is very large and we don’t won’t to bring too many North American appliances (the whole power converting deal).
      What a great daughter =)

  • We are doing the same thing! I’ve scanned photos before and it’s a pain. You have to clean the photos and the scanner and it takes too long. My husband found a company, but I don’t know the name. We haven’t sent them, yet.
    I’ve been outsourcing the food preparation. We normally don’t go out to eat, but now that we are in the process of selling the house we are eating out a lot. It’s too time consuming to be cooking and then cleaning the kitchen.
    Hey, I was going to hire someone to come and clean the windows in my house and I ended up doing it myself. I’ve also done a lot of the work like painting walls, etc. I’m fine with spending some money on food so I can get other things done that I cannot oursource. Ok, too much explanation here, right? I guess I do feel guilty.

    • This all makes sense to me. When you have a long list of tasks, and a short amount of time, choose the tasks that you want to do (and are cost effective). I had the same thoughts when we were considering putting our home on the market: I would never be able to keep it show read while we were cooking/eating in it three times a day. We would have done something similar. Actually – we did do something similar this last week because we had potential renters over 5 times. Before the big open house my husband went out for sandwiches (I had just cleaned the kitchen).

    • Yeah, I thought Photoscanning was a good option too until I sent 1200 photographs to them for scanning. As soon as I shipped the box from them, they have refused to respond to my emails, answer phone calls, or share any status of my order. Will I ever see my collection of photographs dating back a century? Who knows? But Mat Dwyer and Photoscanning certainly isn’t telling!

      • We have had the same experience with photoscanning.ca. Sent 4 boxes of slides to them. They acknowledged receiving them & then invoiced me for processing them, I paid over $200 & then nothing. I am still trying to get a reply from them.

        I have initiated a file with VISA who will get my money back but not my lost slides & memories.

        Do NOT trust this company with your slides.

        Denis, Calgary.

        • I, too, used Photoscanning.ca. Terrible service and very unprofessional. It took 4 months of constant phone calls and emails to get my photos back. I was overcharged, and he never responded to my request for a refund. Stay away from this ‘business’!

  • Congrats on the nomination – count one more vote 😉

    One thing I always outsource is clothes mending. Not that I can’t sew, but I definitely can’t do as good a job by hand as a seamstress can with a machine, and over the years I have come to realize that clothes that have been torn, lost buttons, etc. end up sitting for months in a pile before I actually get around to fixing them. The seamstress at my local dry cleaner charges on average $5 per repair, and it is supremely worth the money for me to just drop the things off there and pick them up a couple of days later, knowing they are properly fixed. I always feel really silly and lazy when I drop off a sweater with a simple hole in the armpit seam, but whatever… it gets the job done 🙂

    My other confession is that since moving in with J, we have hired cleaners to come by every other week. I am a ridiculous clean freak, and it drives me insane to spend hours cleaning this place, only to have J come home from work and make a mess of the bathroom, or to have the cats shed/puke on the freshly vacuumed and mopped floors. I still clean the kitchen every day (can’t stand having an unhygienic food prep space) and the floors every two days, but I have resigned myself to let the cleaners take care of the bathrooms, laundry room, de-hairing of the sofa, and all the dusting. Even though those chores only get done every other week, I feel less offended when the spaces get dirty because I haven’t spent all day cleaning them myself.

  • It took us two years to finish writing and mailing all our wedding gift thank you cards. That was a few years back. In actual fact, it took about three hours to write and mail all our cards, but it took two years of procrastination… Now that we have a new baby, the list of folks to write thank you cards to is nearly as long as our wedding list! Our little guy is nearly three months old now, and I’ve only sent four thank you cards. I wish I could pay someone to write these things for us, but sadly that’s probably not kosher.

    • Don’t bring up wedding gift thank yous around me. I would guess 80% of them were received. And baby shower gifts? Ummm even worse. I recycled all the leftover handmade wedding gift thank you cards during the great purge.
      I did try to send photos by email of Henry in/with the gifts he was given. People seemed to really like that. Store that one away if you want to give up on handwritten notes.

  • I’m interested to see how you like photoscanning.ca. I really need someone to do this (I can’t imagine scanning them myself – too much work!) and didn’t know what options we have in Canada. I’m so glad you posted about this!

    BTW, I am a new subscriber to your blog and I really love it. We are newbies to Minimalism and I love to read other’s perspective. Good luck on your move – what an adventure for your family!

    Michelle

    • Hope it’s good. It looks like it will be about $135 CDN with all the return shipping and 300 DPI scanning of under 1200 photos. I think that is worth it because I a) was really loathing the job and b) it would have been at least a two day job for me to get it all done.
      Thanks for the comment and good luck with your simplifying =)

  • Yep, sometimes time is money.
    We are champions of DIY and will tackle most projects ourselves. However, with four wee kids, we have less and less time. I’m starting to think in terms of my husband’s hourly wage. If it costs more (theoretically) for him to do it than for me to pay someone else, then I’m going to start paying someone.

    And, Sharron, I am 100% with you on the oven cleaning. I have yet to find a “Ken” in my area but, when I do, I will welcome him into my kitchen with open arms…

    Karen (Scotland)

    • We are pretty weak on DIY tasks. One of many reasons we have an apartment instead of a house. I do try to do some things on my own but I never want to risk making it worse. I just did a small repair to our toilet but I’m never going to be handy enough to actually replace one.
      We need a Ken here too!

    • Ovenu is a franchise and they are nationwide is there one near you? You can search on their website for one near you.
      Hope that Helps
      Sharron x

  • Not really a minimilist thing but I, queen of clean can not clean my oven, i detest it, i will (and do) clean anything, i actually enjoy it, but cleaning the oven brings me out in a cold sweat so i pay a lovely man called Ken who comes every 3rd month or so and makes my oven like new again. At first i felt really guilty about the cost £45, but honestly i budjet it within my ‘household maintanence’ budjet. I also see it as being the more green option, the chemical cleaners i use hurt my throat and are not good for son’s asthma. Ken can only use non toxic cleaners, so it’s a win win situation. I think if you cut other areas you shouldn’t feel too guilty when you outsource projects.

    My photos are on my hit list, currently they are in shoe boxes in the loft trouble is when i ever i get them down i loose days to looking at them and reminicing and feeling happy, sad, and everything else in beetween.

    Sharron x

    • Not a fan of cleaning ovens myself. Your Ken sounds like a great investment. Bonus that he uses non-toxic cleaners.
      That is a pitfall/joy to the photo sorting: lose a lot of time reminiscing.

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