Monday's Sanity Saver: Picwing

The definition of the 21st century American family? Geographically distributed. If your family is like ours, you've got relatives in Maryland, Massachusetts, Illinois, Alaska, Florida and everywhere in between.

And not all of them are 'online.'

Lila is lucky enough to get to know all eight of her great-grandparents. Most of them use email but really aren't likely to hop online and check out our family blog. So naturally we try to keep them up-to-date through snail mail.

I'm very good about taking pictures (we've got thousands). I'm usually ok at sending them to Walgreens or Kodak for printing. I am TERRIBLE about putting them in mail. I can't tell you how many duplicate prints I have of some photos because I had planned on dropping a bunch in the mail...

So for Christmas last year, I decided to give Picwing, an online photo distribution service, a try. All of our grandparents (Lila's great grandparents) were given albums with some photos in them, and a Picwing subscription. This meant that every month, they would get 10-20 photos from us so they could "see" Lila grow.

Although it's probably more economical to print and mail the photos myself, Picwing has been my sanity-saver. All I need to do is upload the photos I want sent each month, and they do the rest. To upload, I can either use the widget they created and upload from my desktop, or I can email to a specially-designated email address. I can even add a photo caption for them to print on the back. It's a service worth packing a lunch twice a month for(we pay $19.95/month to have photos sent to four addresses).

We had some bumps in the beginning. There was an issue with the automatic debit payments that was quickly resolved. Customer service couldn't have been more helpful and made sure my account was credited appropriately.

Best of all? Our grandparents are THRILLED. They love getting their photos each month and we love chatting with them on the phone to tell them about when and where the photos were taken.

So if your desk drawer is stuffed with duplicate photos you had hoped to get out in the mail to Aunt Marjorie in Phoenix, you might want to give Picwing a try.

I'm curious though - - how do you stay 'in touch' with offline relatives who live far away?