My father passed away last summer. When it came time to sort through his belongings there wasn’t much I wanted to take home. But I did take the photos. Most of them came from an album that had belonged to my great-grandparents, filled with pictures of their life in Brooklyn in the late ’30s and early ’40s. Faces I don’t recognize standing in front of buildings that probably aren’t there anymore. My father could have told me every one of their stories. Now there’s no one left who can.
He was also a world traveler. I’m not exaggerating when I say he’s the guy who needed a supplemental passport book because the original ran out of pages. So many of those trips were solo that there’s no one I can even ask about them. No one to say, “Oh, that was the time he…” about any of it. Those stories went with him.
I’m not telling you this to be a bummer at the party. I’m telling you because if I could go back and hand my dad a product that made it stupidly easy to record family memories—to tell those stories, write them down, or even just answer a few good questions over a phone call—I would do it in a heartbeat. And I’d do it yesterday.
The good news is that right now, there are more tools than ever that make preserving family stories less of a chore and more of an experience, both for the person doing the remembering and for the people who will one day be so glad they did. Some of them capture stories through voice. Some turn a year of weekly prompts into a hardcover memoir book. Some will digitize the VHS tapes slowly decaying in your parents’ basement. And every single one of them makes a genuinely stunning gift. (If you’re in competition with other family members for best gift giver status? This is your win.)
I did find a handful of services that use AI robocalls to interview your relatives, and I left every single one of them off this list because they made me feel Wall-E levels of sad. Isn’t hearing your loved one’s actual stories kind of the entire point? Why would you ask a robot to call Grandma? No. We’re not doing that. Here’s what we are doing.
Ways to preserve family stories that you'll actually stick with
$99
If the storyteller in your life hates to type, this is the one. Remento sends weekly prompts (of your choosing) via text or email, and your person just…talks. They record a voice or video response on whatever device they already own—no app downloads, no passwords, no “can you help me log in” calls. Remento’s Speech-to-Story technology turns those recordings into polished written stories, then compiles everything (plus your photos) into a gorgeous hardcover book. The real magic? QR codes on every page that let you scan and hear the original recording. So you’re not just reading Grandpa’s story about sneaking out to Coney Island—you’re hearing him tell it, laugh and all. As seen on Shark Tank, for what that’s worth. I think the fact that Barbara cried says more.
$99 for a year of prompts + one hardcover book
$99
Storyworth is the OG of the memoir-in-a-book space—they’ve been doing this for over a decade and have helped publish more than a million books. Each week, your storyteller gets an email with a question (from a library of 500+). They can reply by typing, writing on the website, or even calling in on a landline—which, if you have an older relative who treats smartphones with deep suspicion, is a game changer. Family members get emailed the stories as they come in, so it becomes this beautiful slow drip of connection throughout the year. At the end, everything gets bound into a full-color hardcover. It’s simple and it works, which is exactly why people keep coming back to it.
$99 for a year of prompts + one hardcover book
$99
For the family whose love language is food—and let’s be honest, that’s most of us. Culinage is a collaborative family cookbook platform, but it’s so much more than recipes. You can upload handwritten recipe cards (finally digitizing that index card held together with masking tape), record voice notes and cooking videos, and write the stories behind each dish. Weekly prompts from their recipe assistant keep everyone contributing, and the whole thing gets turned into a bookstore-quality hardcover cookbook. Multiple family members can add to it, which makes it a beautiful group project for the holidays. Because the recipe is never really just the recipe—it’s who taught it to you, and how they always added a little extra of something without telling anyone. (Or yelled at you to just “fold in the cheese!”)
$99 for a year + one hardcover cookbook
$35
If you have the photos and just need somewhere truly beautiful to put them, MILK Books is the answer. This New Zealand-based company has been crafting handmade photo books for over a decade, and the quality is genuinely in another league—we’re talking archival-grade materials, linen or leather covers, lay-flat stitched binding, and printing so vivid your phone photos look like they were taken by a professional. Their online design studio makes layout easy, and the range goes from affordable classic books to premium albums that feel like they belong in a museum gift shop. Yes, they’re pricier than your standard drugstore prints. But this is the kind of book that lives on your coffee table for the next 50 years, and it will hold up for every single one of them.
Starting at $35 for a classic photo book
Meminto has a uniquely flexible approach: instead of a subscription, you pick from nine themed book topics (life story, travel, family, faith, memorial, and more) and pay once. You get 52 guided questions delivered weekly or all at once—your call. You can answer by typing, voice recording, or video, and their AI tidies up grammar and filler words while keeping your voice intact. You can add up to 250 photos and even embed videos via QR codes. What I particularly love is that they offer a memorial book option, where multiple family members can contribute stories about someone who has passed. If your family is scattered across time zones, Meminto’s collaborative features let everyone pitch in from wherever they are.
Starting at $99 for a hardcover book
$29
For the person in your life who prefers pen to screen—or for you, right now, while your kids are still small. Promptly Journals are gorgeous, linen-bound hardcover journals with guided prompts for every stage of life. Their My Autobiography journal walks someone from birth to golden years in 141 pages that can be completed in as little as four hours total. Their Childhood History covers pregnancy through age 18 and can be filled out in about an hour per year. The prompts are thoughtful without being cheesy, there’s room for photos and mementos, and the archival-quality paper means these will last. This is the low-tech, pick-it-up-and-put-it-down option—no Wi-Fi required—and there’s something really lovely about that.
Starting at $29
$1299
This is the splurge—and it is worth every penny. No Story Lost pairs your loved one with a real, human interviewer who conducts phone or video interviews (2 to 6 hours, depending on the package). They transcribe, write, edit, and design a coffee-table-style biography book with your family’s photos woven in. You also get the original audio recordings, which might honestly be the most priceless part. It’s the option for the parent or grandparent who would never in a million years sit down and write a memoir but would happily chat with a friendly stranger for an hour about the time they accidentally ended up at Woodstock. If cost is a barrier, consider going in on it with siblings. This is a group-gift situation that no one will forget.
Starting at $1,099
$34.99
You know that box in your parents’ closet? The one with the VHS tapes of your third birthday and the film reels from the ’70s and the envelope of old slides no one has a projector for? Legacy Box is how you rescue all of it. They send you a prepaid kit, you fill it with your tapes, photos, film reels, slides—whatever analog media is slowly decomposing in someone’s attic—and their team hand-digitizes everything at their facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee. You get your originals back plus digital copies on the cloud (with a thumb drive option). They’re the largest digitizer of home media in the country, they barcode and track every single item, and they run frequent sales that make it very affordable. Every day that box sits in the closet, those memories are fading a little more. This is the nudge to finally do something about it.
Starting at $34.99
$149
This one is different from the rest—and it fills a gap I didn’t know existed until I saw it. The Memory Source lets you build a beautiful, custom celebration website for someone you love. You get your own domain name (think TheLegendOfDave.com—yes, really), then invite friends and family to upload photos, stories, and messages that get organized into an interactive timeline. It’s stunning for milestone birthdays, retirements, weddings, or celebrations of life. There’s a guest book feature, a celebration reel that turns your photos into a video tribute with music, and even an event-mode slideshow you can project at a party. It comes with a QR code you can print on invitations or cards. For $149 you get 12 months of hosting plus the custom domain, with an optional ~$25/year to keep it going. It’s basically what you wish a Facebook tribute page could be—if Facebook had taste.
$149 one-time
source
https://www.mother.ly/life/ways-to-preserve-family-stories/
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