“I’ll get to it someday.”

“Maybe when I get around to buying a photo scanner and figure out how to use it.”

“It’s just too much work.”

“One of my stepdaughters or grand-adults can do it. They know that ‘tech’ stuff – I don’t.”

That’s me in my ongoing, seemingly endless, efforts to declutter and downsize my home. In doing so, I found a small mountain of old photos in albums, packets and boxes. That led to opportunities to flashback in time.

There’s nothing quite like looking through old family photos. They bring to life memories and stories we may have long forgotten about. It’s like taking a walk down memory lane, and it’s a fantastic way to reconnect with our past.

Time has taken its toll on pictures from my childhood, my school days, my military time and my time in the Vietnam War, along with other personal milestones. Many photos have yellowed, shifted colors or faded. Photos get damaged, scratched, moldy, torn and bent. And when we aren’t careful, sometimes they are just misplaced.

Looking at old black-and-white pictures really took me back to the days where it all seemed so much simpler.

There are pictures of me as a baby, luckily not posing on a bear skin rug or sitting on a chamber pot, and that skinny, dorky kid was me. It was a time of sleeping in feather beds at Grandpa Hay’s small farm as a boy and dreaming in a cloud; visits to a privy, having someone standing or sitting nearby to ensure I didn’t fall in (Grandpa did eventually make a portable covering from wood to accommodate smaller bottoms); and gathering eggs in the morning and eating drumsticks for dinner after Grandpa used a metal clothes hanger to snag a couple of chickens and Grandma cooking from the large wood-burning stove in the kitchen.

Family life sometimes was challenging. I do know that there were more good times than bad. Most things eventually worked out. And if they didn’t, we learned from them. Life is what life is.

Family history and life stories help to keep memories alive and allow each generation to have a sense of who they are and where they come from. It’s a timeless family legacy to pass along to future branches of the family tree.

We now can digitize important letters, military records and other documents along with photographs and pass/share copies with family members.

I usually use my smartphone to quickly and easily digitize family photos to email them to family members. The quality of taking a picture of a picture often isn’t the best, capturing the camera glares, shadows, etc. Photos can come out blurry for those without the steadiest of hands.

It is better to scan old photos than to photograph them. My plan is digitizing some, perhaps many, from my collection of family pictures at the Memory Lab at the Johnson County Central Resource Library, 9875 West 87th St., Overland Park. It’s a free service.

Since opening two years ago, the Memory Lab has helped 1,959 patrons. The lab has scanned/digitized 863,460 items, including photos, slides, negatives, family movies, VHS recordings and documents. It is a joint project of Johnson County Library and the Johnson County Genealogical Society. Volunteers staff the lab and assist library patrons with using the equipment. Appointments are required and may be made online at jcgsks.org.

Using technology and a software app, I have started to compile and digitize stories, photos, a few documents about important times/chapters in the 78 years of my life. I hope it becomes a keepsake for my family members and generations to come.

There’s an old saying: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Old pictures can also create and preserve a thousand memories. Everyone has a life story. Treasure it!