Does anyone have any software (and/or workflow) suggestions for what they do with birthday cards, Christmas cards etc? I would like a way of scanning them in and organising / looking back at them.
At present, I keep the ones I like around for a while then when there’s too much clutter recycle them. But there are definitely some that I later think I would like to look at again.
I’ve tried or thought about:
Using the Files app on my iPhone to scan them to an iCloud Drive folder (can’t settle on a naming scheme either, or how to tag them to search later)
Just taking a photo and having them in Photos.app (takes up too much space on my phone)
Neither of these options do the organising part of it that doesn’t end up being one large jumble of files. I appreciate most people probably don’t store them, but if anyone does how do you do it?
I occasionally take a picture of a card and leave it in Photos. But if you don’t want to leave them in Photos, why not sign up for a free Gmail account and keep them in Google Photos?
You could install the app on your iPhone, let all your photos sync to Google automatically, then occasionally toss out everything except the card photos.
I read them, shake my head a few times like Chevy Chase looking at the Grand Canyon in the Vacation original film, and then into the (physical) trash can they go.
With those I wish to keep, I just take photos of the inside and outside and store them in Apple Photos. This then surfaces them through the Rewind app which shows all photos take on a particular date. E.g 26th December.
I do a few scrapbook pages of the Christmas and Birthday cards I like. Then I have them, know where they are and can get back to them easily. Christmas ones are usually in the ending bits of the yearly scrapbooks. Birthday ones are at or near the birthday they were received for pages. Now, to be honest, I haven’t done real paper scrapbooks in a while, COVID seemed to have interrupted me in that but I have all the tools and was thinking about going back and doing them again. For now I sort through the cards, the few I want to keep I put into a big manila envelope and put the year on the outside. So I will be easy to pull them out and do scrapbook pages again. I usually end up keeping only the letters or cards with notes/letter. They are also useful for family history stuff. I’ve used old letters and cards from my mother and grandparents in genealogy research so they have value.
DEVONthink has an excellent Apple Notes import function. Each month I import all of my Apple Notes into DEVONthink. I created a special Apple Notes archive database just for this purpose. This is why I’m comfortable using Apple Notes.
One option would be to add them to date entries in the new Journals app, which would automatically put them in a timeline, making it easy to go back to a holiday and the days surrounding it in any given year. (You can set custom dates, so you can add entries retroactively.)
Otherwise any notes/PKM app that accepts photos and scans would work (or even just folders in iCloud, e.g., Greeting Cards > Christmas > 2023), though with a bit more manual organizing.
Thanks all for the suggestions. I already (under)-utilise Apple Notes so I’m going to try that with some tagging. Tags don’t normally gel with me but maybe this is a use for that.
This is a nice idea, and if Journal had the facility for multiple journals I’d consider it. However, I’m testing moving from Day One to Journal and this would clutter the view too much.
You’ll get more benefit from tags if you create a few Smart Folders. For example, you could create one for cards that includes that tag plus year, etc.
I’m not appreciative of Hallmark or American Greetings. For the very few personally customized cards (usually Christmas and with photographs) I get, I save in a filing cabinet. The others end up in the trash. No sentimentality for corporate messages.
Hi, just scanned them in as PDFs and store them in a file that contains all the PDFs for the year with the name of the sender in the title of the file. For me that works just fine. Part of your problem might be that you have too many friends.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by corporate messages (perhaps we have different phrasing in the UK?). For me it’s more about the message from someone I care about.
Sorry to hear that. I won’t send what you call a “corporate message” card unless I can add a short handwritten personal message and/or something (I think is) funny.
