Photos Don’t Belong in a Shoebox – or Do They?

I discovered MyShoebox earlier this year and have been obsessssssed ever since. I have always been the one in the group to take pictures – I like to document things, what can I say?! But, with the introduction of smart phones and going through multiple cameras (and iPhones) in my early 20’s (I may have dropped/broken/lost a few cameras over the years and usually after late-night bar adventures), all of my pictures were scattered all over the place and it was hard to find things when I needed them.

[Sidenote: The worst was the lost-camera-incident of New Year’s Eve 2012, when I was the only one who took pictures on NYE and proceeded to make it home sans camera and all was lost – I mean if there isn’t a picture on Facebook, it never happened, right? So sad.]

Enter MyShoebox. Here’s how it works….

1. Download the app onto all your devices/computers where you take/store photos. For me, this was my iPhone and iPad, Brian’s iPhone and my home laptop.
2. Import all the photos from your devices/computers into the app. This was quite time-consuming for me, because I have about 15,000 pictures that had to be uploaded, but I did it in batches, and it wasn’t too bad. Now, I try to import all my photos once a week to avoid a backlog.
3. Once your photos are all imported into the app, you’re all set! Never fear about losing your phone or a dead computer, because all your images are stored online (I don’t know the nitty-gritty, but the pics are there, trust me).
4. I demoed the “Pro” plan for the first 30 days and decided to upgrade at the end of my trial for $48/year. With the paid-plan, you get the original photo resolution, which is mucho importante for me for when I get around to blowing up prints to frame and creating photo books. Plus, my computer (which is where most of my older photos are saved) is less than reliable and I am worried it is going to blow up any day now, and I would just be stuck with the online resolution of those photos. (no good)

The search function is also amazing and so easy to use. You can search through all your photos via timeline, event, date, location, camera, etc. And, on the homepage, it populates random photos by days, years, and random moments in time, which is a fun trip down memory lane.

Here are some photos on my current homepage that are definitely worthy of #tbt posts:

But, the BEST feature, is the “flashback emails” of “This Day in History” that I get from MyShoebox on the reg. I get emails with random photos from over the years and I LOVE IT. It is so funny to look back at the pictures and what I was doing when – a nice break during the workday. (Although it does get a little awkward from time to time when pictures of those unnamed-certain-someones pop-up, but I should probably just delete those altogether….)

Now I can sleep at night knowing that all my photos are safely stored – woo hoo!! (It might sound crazy, but this is the type of thing I wake up in a cold sweat about in the middle of the night. Don’t judge!) If you are photo-storage-crazy like me, go download this app now and at least give it a whirl for the 30-day free trial – I think you’ll get hooked!

Yours in photo-storage,

–Kelly