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Paper clutter and digital clutter can transform minor nuisances to major problems when you have a critical need for access to your important life documents. Today we want to flag the evolution well underway to declutter and organize all of life’s essential information via what’s commonly referred to as digital vaults. 

Bottomline: These modern tools can help you and your loved ones to get organized and be better prepared. 

How many email, banking, shopping, entertainment streaming, and even cloud storage sites are you using? Apps exist to help you keep track of paid memberships to ensure you remember to resubscribe or cancel, helping you keep an eye on costs and control the chaos. Check out this story from US News: Money for information on a few. 

And what about true life essentials, like the paper copies we keep of everything from warranties, tax filings, and receipts to insurance policies and mortgage documents. Sometimes we keep these because we aren’t certain where the digital version exists or if a paper copy is somehow legally required. We may even have digital duplicates floating around in our email accounts. 

Digital vaults can manage it all, your car title, mortgage information, passport and drivers license, and banking and investment details as well as life’s daily resources (memberships, online accounts, contact lists, and more) to be better prepared for everyday life, the aftermath of natural calamities, and deaths in the family. Vaults have a different scope than home inventory apps, the latter focusing on the tangible stuff. And vaults offer more features than file storage, like Box, Dropbox, or Google Drive, where you can nearly endlessly amass files without rhyme or reason.

The Early Days of Digital Vaults

Some of the first companies in this space emerged following the 2011 tsunami in Japan, others have steadily followed.  

At stake is everything we rely on to make our lives function. And when major calamities strike, we may lose access to important documents, including insurance policies, property deeds, and more, without which a return to any sort of normal is impaired and/or prolonged. A digital solution was needed to help people through these life altering events with less stress, cost, and loss. 

Why go digital? Because files in a cabinet or box are vulnerable. Period. Add to that the fact that more and more of our lives have gone digital, there’s no reason to create a paper trail for loss and misuse when robust and affordable digital options are now available to help us tackle it all securely. 

The Digital Vault Industry Today

The digital vault industry has emerged to not only securely store critical information but to also offer built-in planning tools. How’s that for efficient!  

Avoid getting distracted by bells and whistles, however. Review each vault’s listed features, and ask yourself: Does it meet my core needs? No one vault is exactly like another. Pick the one you’ll actually use and will work best as you work with financial services, insurance, estate planning and other professionals, too. At a minimum, as you review each vault consider: 

• • • Security of the system, how you will sign in and grant others access, and how any of your personal information is being used by AI tools to generate personalized recommendations. 
    • Export options if you terminate your subscription and want to take your assets back out. 
    • Adding new information, meaning is this a tedious manual endeavor or is there support from smart instant scanning and sorting (generally AI-assisted). 
    • Price for the trial period, annually, and lifetime plus any add-on features you “need.” If there is a free model, always try before you buy, and then upgrade if you like it and free is insufficient for your needs. 
    • Unique features. As we’ve said, no vault is exactly like the other and your needs are not identical to others’ either. Trustworthy Certified Experts™ offer customized 1:1 guidance whereas Motivity Care provides a suite of concierge care management services and GoodTrust is supporting estate planning. 
    • Ease of use, because beyond different features each offers, the vaults each look, feel, and organize your information a bit differently as is the ease with which you can securely share information with family and professionals. Don’t forget to test your vault out on the device you will use to get the work done, e.g. desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or phone.

Here are a few examples of digital vaults on our radar, each with an array of unique features, offerings, and specialties.

Artifct Here are a few examples of digital vaults on our radar, each with an array of unique features, offerings, and specialties.

(In alphabetical order; with company tagline.)

• • • Everplans: All the pieces of your world in one place. 
    • GoodTrust: Estate planning made easy, affordable, and secure. 
    • Keylu: Life is chaotic. Keylu brings order. 
    • Motivity Care: Redefining how you manage caregiving. 
    • Prisidio: Your digital vault. For life.™ 
    • Trustworthy: The Family Operating System®

You’ve Signed Up to a Digital Vault: Now What?

If you’ve taken the step to set up your data within a vault, be proactive to ensure your time and money are well spent. Here are a few tips to make the most of your digital vault from our personal experience: 

1. 1. 1. Block time to your calendar over the next few weeks to input your critical accounts, memberships etc.; if you have a filing cabinet or box, start by digitally migrating those contents. Email is another great source to migrate docs you’ve received. 
      2. Turn on any available options for reminders so you keep information updated and fill any gaps you might leave;  
      3. Add an annual refresh date on your personal calendar; of course, if you have a major life event (birth, death, sell a company, etc.), or you move, you should also update your vault information; and, 
      4. Set alerts in your search engine of choice, such as Google Alerts, for announcements from your vault company about events, new or retired features, and policy and price changes in case you miss an email or alert from the vault.
      5. Send feedback to your digital vault of choice. It only makes the product better (for you and for all) for companies to receive feedback. Screenshots and videos are amazing bonuses to include in your email to the company. Don't forget to mention what type of device you are working from (e.g., smartphone, tablet, desktop), if applicable.

With a digital vault, you’ll be better prepared for yourself and your loved ones. We hope you find one that fits your needs!

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© 2025 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

When my daughter first started to read, she loved to sit and page through the Shel Silverstein books of poetry. I’d overhear her chirpy little voice melodically reciting the poems in her bedroom to her audience of stuffed animals. The books are aged but quality hardbound copies, gifts from my parents when I was young and bearing inscriptions such as “Merry Christmas, 1992.”  

As my daughter got a bit older, questions started to bubble up from the poems, like, “Why is there a curly string on that phone?” and “What is that v coming out of the top of that big tv?” 

Technology has changed dramatically since Silverstein penned these poems, opening up new topics of conversation across generations.

Technology change has also greatly complicated something else: Simply finding a photo.

I am in my 40s. I have lived through the transition from 35 mm film to digital cameras supported by memory cards to predominantly using my smartphone to take pictures. I don’t even have a camera purchased within the last decade! I should probably take a hint from Artifcts’ Tech Detox checklist to dispose of a few. But maybe not the first big 35mm I bought when I was leaving to study abroad in Sweden. It’s a bit sentimental to me.

I digress!

Fast forward to last weekend when I wanted to find a series of photos I took when my sister and I visited NYC in 2005 just after Thanksgiving. I turned to my husband and said, “What did we even take photos with in 2005? Did we have cameras on our phones then?” He shrugged and hazarded a guess that we were still in the memory card digital camera era.

I looked for over an hour through portable hard drives and photos in cloud storage to no avail. Making this search more complicated was the fact that for some reason, the dates on the photos in the folder viewer were all identical, like it took on the date that I transferred the photos to the hard drive.

What’s next for my photos?

My photo problem is growing worse by the day. I’m guessing yours is, too. Did you know that on average we take 20 photos a day? That’s 5.9 billion photos every day worldwide.

And that’s not even factoring the boxes, albums, and bins of photos that my parents will someday pass on to my siblings and me. I need to get my act together now before the deluge arrives.

My action plan looks something like this: 

• • • Corral all my photos—physical and digital—into one place and back them all up on a portable hard drive and in the cloud, because I do not want to lose anything.
    • For physical photos with no digital version, decide to (a) buy a scanner and digitize myself, (b) hire a professional photo manager to tackle this and so much more, (c) take the photos into a local shop or a mail away company to digitize, and/or (d) use the Photomyne app to scan the photos rapidly without even removing them from their album pages. Making this effort far easier could be technology like Mylio. It is designed to corral your photos into a single library and to make the next step easier too…
    • Sort my photos, at scale, which to me sounds incredibly daunting and unpleasant. This is where I hope that the metadata in at least the digital-native photos will expedite the process because it can reveal time, date, and place. Plus, even the tech built into the modern smartphone can sort by type of photo (yes, it knows how many selfies you’re taking) and provides facial recognition, too.

• • • For scanned photos, well, that’s another matter. There’s no metadata unless I presorted them and have at least an event name or year associated with them or the camera-imposed dates on them (but then, was my camera date and time accurate?).
    • Tag favorite pics that I want to write about, share with others, or otherwise bring back to life, maybe hang on a wall. You know, the joyful part of photos. Even last weekend while hunting for those NYC photos, I came across a beautiful photo of my friend’s mother who has since passed. I paused to text her the photo so I would not forget and so she’d have this sweet image to add to her own collection.

What about my NYC photos?

Hopeless.

For now, I have given up looking for the original, digital versions of my NYC photos. I pulled down the heavy cardboard box from the office closet, opened up the decaying photo album I knew contained print copies of the photos I was seeking, and took photos of the photos.

The entire inspiration for looking for this set of NYC photos was a pin that my daughter noticed on my sweater on a recent cold day here in Austin, Texas. She asked if it was new, and the answer to that question led me back in time to one of my favorite stories to tell people about a Thanksgiving nearly 20 years ago that throws me into fits of laughter even in the telling of it today.

Now, I can be sure my sister will never live down this memorable Thanksgiving and my daughter will know the story of the pin, a future heirloom. My story is Artifcted to stay.

Maybe you have a similar favorite story you tell about a family member to Artifct and share. Some stories are too good to allow them and the photos that add color to the telling to fade away!

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We love writing about photos and helping you capture the meaning behind them. Explore these ARTIcles for more!

© 2025 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The following story is based on a true story shared with us by a member of the Arti Community. We’ve altered some details to protect their privacy. We hope their experience helps you feel less alone in the tough choices you make as times change, your way of life changes, and who you live that life with changes, too.

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When my father passed away, my mother was truly on her own. But she was not physically or mentally healthy enough to live on her own. My parents had been married for 63 years. Solitude and independence were foreign to her. I know that in many families the open question in this scenario is, “Who will take care of Mom?” If that’s the story you are expecting, you can stop here. That is not our story.

For my family, when it came time to settle the estate, my siblings and I sat down together in our childhood living room and spoke very frankly. All in our 60s and 70s, we knew our own minds and we knew each other well enough to hash it out together fairly quickly.

My brother said he wanted the house. He had no desire to leave the local area, so taking over the family home was his top wish.

My sister wanted my mom. You read that right. Her one request was that Mom move in with her so she could take care of her and ensure she had constant familiarity and companionship. This suited Mom perfectly, and so she moved into my sister’s home where she spent the final 10 years of her life.

Are you now wondering what it was I wanted? One thing: a cabinet that had sat in our family’s living room for as long as I can remember and surely longer. It contained the most glorious accumulation of ‘stuff.’

As a child, I wanted nothing more than to open the doors and explore all the knickknacks inside. I’d ask my mom about everything, driving her crazy as she was trying to get on with other tasks around the house. To me, a burnt casserole in the oven was just fine if I got to hear the story of Grandma’s crystal bowl one more time. 

The Cabinet of Curiosity Lives On

This cabinet of curiosities now sits in my home, filled with some heirlooms from my mother and my grandparents too. But over the years it has taken on the personality, interests, and lives of me, my husband, our children, and our grandchildren. It’s filled with stories, stories we tell as often as we may. The reality is, we have so little time together with our family that I don’t think there will ever be enough time to share them all. 

When I use the dishes and glasses, I think of the relatives who owned them. For example, one of my dear mother-in-law’s beautiful wine glasses has a nick on the edge. When I wash and dry the glass, and feel the edge, and I remember how she dearly loved her family despite our flaws. 

We have a silver bowl awarded to my husband for outstanding geological research, always in need of a polish, and seldom out on display (shame on us!).

Buried among the crystal pieces you’ll find a decanter we bought in Prague in 2012. It’s leaded crystal, so we couldn’t actually store the port we'd drink in it. We needed to decant only what we intended to drink. And, with that level of practicality, can you really blame us for letting it fall into disuse?

We also have the baking dish that Grandpa Art used for his freshly caught fish. And two glasses that our wonderful Uncle Lawrence and his friend created as they practiced their glass etching skills. Oh, and the vases from our travels in China. I’ll stop there, because it truly is my cabinet of curiosities.

My hope for you all is that you will discover the joy that is Artifcts. There are stories I want shared with my immediate family only. Other stories are for my siblings, my church friends, and others. Artifcts offers me a safe place to record and share them. 

Artifcts has become a lovely addition to my day, sitting down to create a few Artifcts, reflecting on my life, sharing with loved ones, and feeling like I’ve done my bit to ensure my family’s history is passed on. I know one day I’ll leave behind a cabinet of curiosities and memories to cherish.

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We know that maybe your story is not about a cabinet. Maybe your story and the messy memories of lives lived are decorating your shelves, packed away in boxes, or adorning every square inch of your home.

Whatever it is you collect, whatever items you choose to hold onto, do yourself, your stories, and your loved ones a favor, and record what these things mean to you. You may be surprised by the fun you’ll have in the sharing and telling, too!

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© 2025 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Creating an Artifct is often a joyful experience, sometimes it is also cathartic, and for many Artifcting has become their preferred means of planning for their today and for their future. Insurance fits into that final category of Artifcts: preparedness. 

As you update your policies or renew in the new year, consider: Do you have enough insurance coverage for your valuables? Are you over insured? Do you have the documentation necessary to file a claim if mother nature, theft, or an accident forces your hand? Is an appraisal needed for a valuable item in your collection?

Ironically, in a 2020 poll from the Insurance Information Institute, fewer homeowners reported having a home inventory than a decade prior, despite increased familiarity with and options for digitization of photos, documents, and more as well as a proliferation of inventory apps for home goods and collections.

It’s human nature to avoid the negative, the improbable, and any issues that aren’t about today. But here at Artifcts, you’ll not only be able to create a record of items that are of greatest value to you, but in the process, you’ll have the opportunity to enjoy reliving and sharing your stories and passions with others, too. 

Artifcts to Support Insurance 

When you create Artifcts with insurance coverage in mind, there are a few best practices to guide you. 

• • • Photos and video. Take advantage of the five photos and/or videos you can add to each Artifct. Take a picture of the object as a whole, take another picture of a maker’s mark, if any, and then photograph the item from other angles. We also strongly encourage you to record and include a short video of the object, showing it from multiple angles. 

• • • Documentation. Take a moment to find the receipt, appraisal, certificate of authenticity, or, if nothing else, a credit card statement that can help validate the original market price paid and the authenticity of the item. Attach it to your Artifct. When you acquire new items of value or collectibles, we recommend you Artifct That on the spot, when everything you need is at hand. This is a habit that will serve you well! 

• • • Provenance. Where did it come from? Why do you have it? What does it mean to you? Even if you have only family lore of where an older item came from, record that in the “Description or story” of the Artifct.  

If you purchased it, describe where and when you were when you acquired the item and what makes it valuable to you. No, sentiment is not a qualifier in appraisal or replacement value, but it will be important to helping you get the right coverage and setting your own expectations for items you value.  

• • • Add optional details. In your Artifct, click to view the “Full Form” and include how old it is, when you acquired it, and the marketplace or artist it’s from to facilitate an appraisal and any future insurance claims. We also strongly encourage to add its current physical “location.” And tag the item, e.g., #insurance, to easily sort your Artifcts by items you have, or want to have, added to your policy.  

Determining the Value of Your Belongings 

If you’re not sure of the value of an item in your collection, but suspect it’s valuable and want expert insight, you can Artifct That and then click “What’s it worth?” to share the Artifct and its supporting documentation privately with Heritage Auctions. They will assign your Artifct to the appropriate expert to review.  

You will receive a notification automatically in a few weeks when the free valuation is ready. You’ll find the valuation report in the documentation section of your Artifct. With the information from the valuation in hand, you can decide what to do next.  

Here's an example: You inherited a clock from your grandfather. You love it because it reminds you of him, always positioned on the bookcase next to his favorite reading chair, and you know he brought it with him to the United States from his homeland, Japan. The free valuation from Heritage Auctions informs you that that clock, in that condition, from that maker, in today’s market would go for between $18,000 and $22,000.  

You may think to yourself, “I better get an appraisal and confirm that it’s covered by my insurance policy.” Or you may think, “I loved Grandpa, but that clock is not that valuable to me. I’m going to sell it and use that money for {whatever you like}.” 

Before you sell a family heirloom or anything you value, you should consider these tips from Lark Mason, an expert in Chinese art and antiquities and frequent host on Antiques Roadshow. Read now! 

Insurance: Fact or Fiction 

We’ll close out this focus on Artifcts for insurance by revisiting our popular “Fact or Fiction?” discussion we had last fall with Howard Insurance, a private insurance advisory and risk management firm, about how to protect your ‘stuff’ from the chaos and mayhem that is life.

We invite you to test your knowledge with our "Insurance: Fact or Fiction" quiz, and then see what the experts have to say. (Hint: Answers are below.) We hope each point will build your confidence to take the necessary steps to protect all you cherish! 

1. 1. 1. I need an appraisal to insure an item separate from my homeowner's policy.
      2. My homeowner's policy will pay to replace items even if my jewelry, antiques, silver or fine art has appreciated in value.
      3. All homeowners' policies are the same and include the coverage for everything in my home.
      4. Coverage for my personal trust is automatically included in my homeowner's policy.
      5. All homeowners' policies include coverage for mysterious disappearance.
      6. My personal property coverage is worldwide.
      7. Coverage for my personal property includes water damage, hurricanes and floods.
      8. There is no deductible for losses to my personal property.
      9. Filing a claim for my personal property will not impact my homeowner's premium.
      10. Mysterious disappearance coverage is included automatically on valuables policies. 

As the fact-fiction quiz reveals, picking the right policy or combination of policies is critical to protecting your ‘stuff,’ and worth a conversation with your agent. Watch the video replay with Howard Insurance for the full details behind each of these fact or fiction questions. 

Happy Artifcting!

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© 2024 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

I always seem to have the funniest and yet profoundly moving conversations with my teenage daughter while stuck in traffic in our nation’s capitol. Yesterday was no exception. After a difficult conversation with a series of family members (all on speaker phone), my daughter turned to me and said, “Mom, I think your legacy is chocolate chip cookies.” 

I’ll spare you the details of the family conversation, but suffice it to say legacy, death, and dying were discussed. Not necessarily the happiest of topics, but topics that needed discussing nonetheless.  

Leave it to my daughter to come up with a one-liner that not only made me laugh but also made me think. You see, here at Artifcts we talk a lot about ‘stuff,’ legacy, family history, and stories. And although I have Artifcted my chocolate chip cookie recipe, I don’t think I ever would have lumped it into the category of my “legacy.” 

How Do We Define Legacy? 

Legacy is a complicated word. For some legacy may mean a name on a building, a patented invention, or other grandiose, broadly recognized achievements. For others, it may be the small moments, memorable stories, or favorite “isms” that made that person unique.  

Regardless of ‘what’ legacy is, all of us are busy creating, living, and building our legacies every single day. Each action we take, each ‘thing’ we make, all becomes part of our collective journey through life.  

So, although the Oxford dictionary defines legacy as either, “the amount of money or property left to someone in a will,” or “the long-lasting impact of particular events, actions, etc. that took place in the past, or of a person’s life,” we at Artifcts think “legacy” is so much more. It’s the stories, memories, and small moments that others will remember long after we are gone. It’s the things that made us laugh and maybe even the things that made us cry. It may be our habits, traditions, and favorite things.  

We’ve tried to capture the essence of all things legacy in our Legacy Checklist and know there is bound to be a thing or two that we missed. Why? Because we are all different, and we all lead different lives. One legacy is not like any other legacy.  

Live and share your legacy with Artifcts!

How Will You Define and Preserve Your Legacy? 

Seeing as October is Family History Month, and this week is National Estate Planning Week, we want to ask how will you not only define but also preserve and share your legacy? Take a moment this week to ponder this question and then take action. There is no time like the present to preserve and share the stories, moments, and yes, ‘stuff’ that make you, you! 

Will valuable assets and charitable donations be part of your legacy?  

If the answer is yes, ensure those assets are documented, and your directives are recorded in your estate plan or will. Our Artifcts “In the Future Field” can help you denote what happens next to those assets, creating a roadmap for your family or executor, including if the asset is to be donated or bequeathed.  

Do you find yourself thinking, “I have no children, but I have all this ‘stuff.’ I don’t think anyone will want it, and I don’t think anyone cares about my stories.”  

So often we undervalue our own life experiences. But we have to think more broadly: They are personal history, family history, and even world history. We’re members of communities and are valued. It’s also true that by linking a story with an item, you can increase its value, such that if you were to sell-off your estate one day, your stories may mean you can boost the ultimate value of the estate you might leave to a charitable organization in your community! 

Remember the “softer side” of your legacy, all those stories, memories, and small moments.  

Give yourself a goal of creating one Artifct a week that highlights some aspect of you that you want others to know about. Like me, it could be a favorite recipe that you’re famous for, or perhaps its tied to a memorable trip with an equally memorable souvenir, or a family heirloom with the family history you intend to pass down to the next generation. Sometimes those small moments mean just as much if not more than the big ‘stuff.’ 

Part of my legacy is indeed those chocolate chip cookies, as my daughter pointed out. The ones I bake before every cross-country meet, the ones the older kids hope for when coming home from college, and the ones I first baked (and delivered!) to my husband’s office when we were dating. The original recipe was my mother’s, although I have altered it over time to include salted butter and chocolate chunks rather than chocolate chips.  

Had you asked me, I would have said they were my mother’s cookies, and part of her legacy; she did teach me to bake them after all, seated on our old butcher block countertop. My daughter, however, has a different viewpoint. And isn’t that the whole point about legacy? Our legacy is what we will one day leave behind for others to remember about us.

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This October, go BEYOND the balance sheet of life and capture the legacy that is you and the stories of your life. Grab that favorite item from your desk, your kitchen table, your living room shelf, and tell its story as only you can, because you lived it!

Happy Artifcting!

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© 2024 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

We live in a world of information overload, and if you’re digging into family history, that overload threat is potentially multiplied by generations.

Some of us organize our research and learnings in folders, and folders within folders. Nothing other than the name of each folder provides us a clue as to how everything inside relates or where gaps in the content may exist.

Others of us rely on hardcopy photo albums and scrapbooks, often missing the contextual details and stories to bring those books to life when the creator of those books is not there to talk you through them. And how do you modify them once complete?

Whether you’re just getting started with fleshing out your family history or focused on closing gaps, we think timelines are a powerful tool to have in your corner. Dive in with us!

Enriching Family History with Artifcts Timelines

Digital timelines can be hit or miss. Many applications, from Google Photos to specialized genealogy software to Facebook, offer timelines, but they often are rigid in terms of editing and lose the context for each entry. That’s because those timelines simply place photos, for example, in sequential order or display SOME information while leaving other information (documents, photos, ...) in separate, disconnected albums or galleries.

We view the Artifcts timeline as the ultimate way to future proof your history by, first and foremost, revealing gaps in the life moments you've captured with your Artifcts. True story: When our co-founder Ellen first looked at her personal timeline, she realized she’d never Artifcted anything about her wedding! Oops.

Once you know your gaps, you can then create new Artifcts to enrich your history with the stories and memories that have been left out. Another approach would be to start with Artifcts you’ve already created and add in videos and audio and/or supporting documentation for more color and context.  

Here's a great example of enriching a family history. It's one thing to know who created this painting:

It’s another to hear first-hand what the artist was trying to capture and what the painting means, a generation later, to the artist’s son. Listen in -->  

Sharing family history in bite-sized mini-stories via Artifcts means you make feel-good progress a bit faster and family are more likely to tune in and listen to the whole story.

Put Timelines to Work for You!

As you Artifct, we create your timeline automatically.

Assuming you have created a few Artifcts already, you will find your timeline by visiting your homepage and choosing "My Artifcts." You'll see the timeline option marked with a yellow "New!"

If your timeline is a bit sparse right now, check out the public Artifcts in our founders' timelines for inspiration - @Heather and @Ellen have shared many Artifcts over the past few years. 

As you explore Artifcts timelines and think about your family history, test out the built-in timeline features, because you never know from where inspiration may spring:

• • • Switch between annual and decade views.
    • Flip your Artifcts from newest-to-oldest and oldest-to-newest.
    • Drag and drop to move any Artifct to a different year.
    • Add time period notes, per year, about key events or family history research gaps.

We have great FAQs about timelines and a quick video ready for you as well.

Share with Us 

We’d love to hear what you learn about your own history when you look at it anew as a timeline. Had you skipped key life events? Are there whole decades missing? What inspires you to fill in any gaps? You can write to us at Editor@Artifcts.com  to share!

Happy Artifcting!

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© 2024 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.