Many of us probably have pictures of ourselves, our loved ones and other things we care about in our homes. It's one of the things that makes your home a home.

Many of us also probably have pictures on harddrives, CDs, as well as other discs and types of memory.

In many cases, your home may be the only place that some of these photographs exist, whether in print or as files. The simple questions is why?

If disaster were to strike, what would happen to the photographs you care about? You might be like my mother who wishes she had more from her childhood, when many of her pictures were destroyed in a flood. With a few steps, that most of us can probably do, you can save copies of your photographs as files, scan them onto discs, and have someone who lives at some distance from you keep a copy of the disc for safekeeping. Convince them to do the same, and if anything ever happens, one of the things you can do to create a new home is print new copies.

Some of the photographs I have I consider priceless. One I love is stuck to the frame, but I am lucky to know my sister also has a copy. There is one that is the only that exists of me with my grandmother. If preserving a copy is so simple as getting it onto a DVD disc and making a copy of that disc, it's an effort of some time and a few dollars.

While your at it, why not reduce some of your vitals records to a digital format and put it on the same disc.