TIPS ON MEMORY KEEPING

It's amazing how many people I talk to that feel completely overwhelmed with the idea of memory keeping - what do we do with all the artwork, keepsakes, and photos coming out our ears?? Never has it been so easy to capture EVERY SINGLE MOMENT with a photo... or ten. Scrapbooking is WAY beyond the realm of possibility for me and most people I know, and we all have gazillions of photos on our phones, our spouses phones, our "good" camera, text messages received, social media, etc. It's exhausting just thinking about it!

When I had my first daughter, I started keeping a memory box for each year where I kept artwork and keepsakes, plus a photo album with actual photo prints in it for each year. 7 years later, with three kids and tons of photos and even more artwork, it was clearly getting out of hand. Years with a birth or family wedding might even have two full albums due to so many photos. I could already imagine that, 20 years from now, I'd need a storage unit for all these "memories" that I would never even look through because there were so many!

Enter my new system - the annual printed photobook which is for the family, and what I'm calling "lifebooks" which is more personal for each family member. Here's how they work:

PHOTOBOOKS

WHAT IS A PHOTOBOOK?

A printed photobook is a bound book with your images printed directly onto the pages, such as books make by Shutterfly, Blurb and others.

WHY IS IT BETTER?

The benefit to these is that you can fit more than 6 photos per page if you'd like, making it easy to stuff in all of your photos from the year without ending up with a book 10 inches thick. And because they are printed onto the page, they are very efficient in terms of space - my 2 1/2 inch wide photo album is only about a 1/2 inch thick as a photobook - add that up over 10 years and that's 5 inches vs. over 2 feet of space!!

STEP 1 - DOWNLOAD PHOTOS ONLY ONCE A YEAR

Download photos off your phone and your husband's phone and any other cameras you have only once each year (I do it each January for the previous year). That way you don't have to wonder which photos you already have and it will make things feel much more manageable.

STEP 2 - EDIT, EDIT, EDIT!

Once you've got all the photos downloaded in one place, you'll see there are a gazillion. Take some time to go through the photos and get rid of as many unnecessary ones as you can - do you really need 12 of your trip to get ice cream that random Tuesday? Pick 1 or 2 and yes, I DELETE the rest *gasp*. If deleting still makes you too nervous, create two folders: "2017 ALL" and "2017 Favorites" so you can differentiate between your favorites to use in your photobook and the complete collection.

STEP 3 - UPLOAD

Once you've got your final selected shots for the year, upload them to a photobook site. After much trial and error, I like Shutterfly for the variety of layouts, sizes of books, number of pages allowed and the ease of use. Their new storyboard feature lets me plop all the photos onto pages without having to deal with layouts right away and I find helps me move a LOT faster.

STEP 4 - KEEP YOUR PHOTOBOOK SIMPLE

This is the most important part - keep it simple! If it takes you a whole year to create one photobook, you'll never stick with it. Pick a size and design you like (I use hardcover 12x12 and the modern white style) and use it every. single. year. Don't kill yourself with all the fancy embellishments and design options unless you really love to and have the time - I find all of that stuff makes me feel overwhelmed, and I personally prefer a minimalist white-space look anyway, so I just arrange the photos and maybe add the occasional caption. It will move quickly if you keep it pretty basic, and trust me, you'll love the clean look of the finished product and the continuity year after year.

STEP 5 - WAIT FOR A SALE

Getting your photobook delivered isn't urgent, so once it's done, keep it there in your account until there's a sale - they usually have them every couple of months. I pretty much never order my photobook until it's 40% off!

LIFEBOOKS

Now, the argument I used to have (and many people still have) against photobooks, is that you can't keep artwork or mementos in a photobook, and the often heard recommendation of scanning everything to put into a photobook is simply not happening in my lifetime, so my answer to this is the "lifebook".

WHAT IS IT?

A lifebook is kind of like a scrapbook but without the work - it's a regular old photo album that I got at Walgreens, and I use the slots to select a few photos from the year that are particularly fun or meaningful, along with any special mementos. I don't "decorate" anything, I just stick it all in at the end of each year.

STEP 1 - ONE PER PERSON

Each child in my house gets one, and only one, lifebook. I will hand it over to them when they move out of the house, and then it's up to them if they want to keep it going, or create new ones for the next chapters of their lives (college, marriage, etc.).

STEP 2 - FIND A SPOT TO KEEP MEMENTOS THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

I use a file box in my home office where I stick everything during the year - photo strips from parties, particularly cute or special drawings or notes, school class photos, cards, ticket stubs, etc. - basically anything I think my child will want to remember some day.

STEP 3 - PICK 12-24 PHOTOS TO INCLUDE IN EACH LIFEBOOK PER YEAR

When I'm in the process of culling photos for our annual photobook, I also select a few photos specific to each child to put in their lifebook - pictures of their birthday party, winning an award, graduating preschool, etc. These are memories of THEIR life, not necessarily the whole family's.

When you upload your photobook photos, make a lifebook album also and get those printed all as 4x6 prints to fit into your album.

STEP 4 - PUT IT ALL IN

When the year is through, I go through all the mementos I've kept during the year, get the photo prints, and just stick everything in page protectors or the album pages and call it a day.

Now that I'm a few years into this, they're turning out great and I think they'll be really special one day. In fact, I've begun going through my own boxes of "stuff" I've kept over the years and am now making one for myself. If I ever have the time, maybe I'll do one for my husband too.

All I can say is that after almost a decade of trying to figure out a "system" I finally have one that I feel good about and can actually keep up with. I hope you'll consider giving the photobooks or the lifebooks (or both!) a try!

And if you have any other tips or tricks for your own system, I'd love to hear it!

-Lindsay