Helping Mum to Preserve Her Precious Memories

Kelly asked for our help while in the process of moving her mum into a care home. Faced with the overwhelming task of clearing out her mother's house, she knew her mother was only allowed to take a few personal possessions with her to her new home.

Kelly knew her mother had been an avid photographer in her youth, so it was no surprise for her to discover many decades of photographs packed away in biscuit tins and shoe boxes stored in cupboards and wardrobes all over the house.

Her mother's care home support staff had suggested that digitizing some old photos would be a great way to help boost her mother's failing memory. They told her that looking at old photos can help trigger memories and spark conversations about the past. This can be a great way to stay connected with loved ones and provide comfort and support.

Kelly chose our reLOVE Photos Premium service to convert her mum's paper photos to digital. With many decades worth of her mum's precious memories at stake, she wanted to make sure she chose a service that genuinely cared about their work and the true value of the memories they were handling.

Our team at reLOVE Photos were honoured to be chosen for this task and were pleased to play an essential part in helping Kelly's mother preserve her memories for now and for future generations of her family.

Reliving a happy childhood

An unexpected bonus of sorting through her mum's photo collection was discovering boxes full of her own childhood photos. Kelly fondly remembered her mother attending all her school events with her trusty camera strung around her neck, ready to take snaps to later share with other parents.

Kelly decided to include many of her childhood photos in her reLOVE Photos service, including this one of her getting ready to dance around the Maypole with her classmates – something that her own children never took part in at their schools. Kelly told us she remembered Maypole dancing was a complex dance to learn, and she and her classmates needed lots of practice to get it right.

As a mother to three teenage kids and having a house packed to the rafters of their stuff, Kelly knew she had little to no spare room to keep her mum's photographs. She was pleased to hear that we offer a secure photo shredding service to reduce waste going into landfills.

Paper photos take up a lot of space in landfills, and they can take hundreds of years to decompose. By recycling paper photographs, we can help conserve these resources and reduce our environmental impact. Around 45 per cent of the photos we receive are recycled, and we continue to encourage our customers to allow us to shred and recycle their old photos securely.

Kelly was also pleased to hear that we work with Tree-Nation to invest in planting new trees in parts of the world where we know they benefit indigenous people. Having three very eco-conscious teenage children, this went down very well with them!

By working with reLOVE Photos, Kelly was pleased she found a way to help her mum trigger memories and spark conversations about the past but also to help her kids learn more about their grandmother's life and history.