Videos & how long they are will probably take up the most storage. That said, 1TB-2TB is probably enough for a normal user - normal being “you’re not doing back ups of a media archive or you edit video a lot” kind of thing.
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1 to 5 TB is probably plenty, depending on how many cute animal videos you have! Personally I would not go smaller than 1TB because drives don’t get that much cheaper and you get way less storage, but it depends on your budget.
Another way to decide is look at your phone storage size (128 GB, 256, etc) and your laptop hard drive size, and add them together. As long as you get something larger than the combination, you should be able to fit everything! For estimation purposes, 1000GB is 1TB. You can probably also log into your iCloud account and see how much storage you’re using and add that to the total? (I’m unfamiliar with iCloud).
Depending on how precious these files are, it could be worth planning to buy a 2nd hard drive and maintain 2 hard drives that are identical. (I don’t do this, it may be overkill, but hardware isn’t forever)
Personally, I have a 1TB drive that is my TimeMachine backup for my laptop, and I recently (ish) got a 5TB drive to consolidate all my media and photos, though that’s a project still in progress.
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Personally I’d go a couple TB, and if you can swing it you might want to consider an SSD (solid state drive) over and HDD (old-style spinning drive). Generally the recommendation is HDD for data storage since they’re cheaper and when you’re doing backups you’re generally not so concerned about speed which makes them a perfectly good option, but SSDs are a lot sturdier when it comes to (for a completely random example that hasn’t repeatedly happened) things like falls off shelves since they don’t have the moving parts to deal with.
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lol I am also unfamiliar with iCloud and just sort of willingly pay for it and assume things are “backed up” in this imaginary place that I don’t even know how to log into 
Trying to clean my digital life up a bit.
Thanks for your suggestions and input!
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I somewhat impulsively booked family photos for 11/1, which is in like 9 days and also we have family visiting this weekend and now I am a little panicking about all of us looking cute.
How much should we try to “match”? I know we’ve come a long way from the matching windbreakers of the 90s, but like, as far as color palettes and vibes? We will be outdoors. LB, who is 13, wants to wear black dress pants and a lavender button down because otherwise he owns only athletic pants with holes in the knees and he doesn’t wear jeans and intensely dislikes clothes shopping and is still traumatized by having to buy clothes for family photos in 2022.
Anyway, if he’s wearing black, do we all need to hew to the black/gray color scale or can we mix in earth tones? Can we mix jeans and dress pants? Should I nix the dress pants because they will look weird outside?
Players in this photo are 2 middle-aged unstylish parents, 3 teenage boys of wildly different tastes and temperaments, and one 3 year old girl. This has become a focus of my constant low-level anxiety so any advice would be very welcome!
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Will your legs be visible in the photos? When my kids and I did family photos I got similar vibe shirts and we all secretly wore sweatpants out of frame.
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Play off of what goes well with the lavendar (blue, green, yellow, greys) and one level down in formality for the adults so you can bridge to very informal for another child?
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Texting you! Got some good advice from my moms group on this but it will make the most sense with screenshots.
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Outdoor photos usually have some full length IME.
The struggle here is that LB is extremely particular but demanding to wear something that doesn’t go with the entire rest of the family’s wardrobe, but I’m getting some ideas from this chat.
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if one of the adults can do tshirt plus jacket, or button down under a fine knit sweater or cardigan? would LB wear smart sneakers instead of dress shoes? or unbutton the sleeves on their button down and scrunch them up for informality?
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Here’s what the internet says about mis matched outfits… honestly I love a real snapshot in time of what the family is actually like.
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But yes to mixing jeans and dress pants! Or khakis and black dress pants! If the other boys are up for blueish and purple tones in their shirts I think it will look great.
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Wait text me too
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Honestly, the unhinged shit that my oldest is fixated on, at any given time have ended up being my absolute favorite photos to look back on. 
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I love it. There is PERSONALITY in that family.
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Yeah I was going to say let everyone wear what they want and you’ll have a photo (imho) that everyone will look back on years from now and love and possibly laugh at.
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You know, maybe we will do this. I talked to LB and he doesn’t want to wear his “best” t shirt and athletic pants, he wants to wear his fancy clothes. But BB does want to wear a T shirt and jeans and then he will look like HIMSELF.
Thinking of wearing my Big Bud Press jumpsuit and my AF1s because those are two things I wear a lot, even if they may be more likely to get me laughed at in 30 years. They have personality!
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I generally get good reviews at the dentist, but should I think about getting an electric toothbrush? (My teeth are tight so I’m bad at flossing.) Looking at some very quickly I see them for $20, $80, and $300. How much do I need to spend? Is there a “best” brand?
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I’ve had multiple dentists say basically, whatever oral B Costco has is perfect, lol.
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Try something affordable to check if you like it. I hate the round ones but love my Philips one brush
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