Archiving Our Families

We do not remember days. We remember moments. Casare Pavese

A couple of weeks ago, a dear reader emailed me for help on documenting her familys life and history. For several generations, we knew this as stuffing pictures in shoe boxes. If we were super-organized, we used photo albums. Today, we call this scrapbooking.

The fastest growing hobby in our countrywith more than 25 million Americans, or 1 in every four households, participatingit didnt even exist as an industry eighteen years ago, when I first contemplated how I would document and organize our own family photosor memories as they are now called. Less than ten years old as an industry, scrapbooking holds more than 52, 000 sites on the Internet; over 4,000 retail stores support this multi-billion dollar industry and even traditional stores such as office supply giants, pharmacies, groceries, and gift shops all carry a sampling of scrapbooking products. The maze isto me anywaycompletely overwhelming. To even partially navigate its many avenues both exhausts and bewilders me.

When you calculate the time and expense required to not only take quality photos (a high quality 35 mm camera, digital camera, and video camera are all practically required paraphernalia), it boggles ones mind to add in the additional cost of documenting your pix once developed. The average scrapper spends $50 per month on her hobby, or roughly $600 a year in supplies. Scrapbook papers generally cost anywhere from 10 cents a piece to upwards of 50 cents a piece (while browsing online sites I came across some fabulous specialty papers for my military enthusiast son, so I purchased papers with a military theme; they cost 45 cents a pop plus shipping) Add to that the cost of stickers, brads, and trinketsall totally adorable in their own riteand your personal scrapbooking arsenal just escalated another couple hundred degrees.

And what about ink pads and rubber stamps? Gotta have those, too. At anywhere from a couple dollars to ten to twelve dollars for a decent stampas well as several dollars per each ink pad (gotta have all those wonderful colors, you know!)youre by now in this stuff too deep to escape fiscally unscathed.

And we havent even gotten to embossing yet.

Oh, geez.

So whats a rocket mom to do? Practically speaking, at what point do you jump onto the scrapbooking craze while maintaining all of the other parenting strategies deemed so important in raising brilliant kids? I mean: can you really instill a musical heritage into your kids, immerse them into sports and exercise, and shape their character and help them to become more spiritually matureand scrapbook all at the same time? Are there really enough hours in the day to get in a good workout at the gym, get dinner on the tableand scrapbook? Can you add community service to your calendar as well as add colorful borders to your family photos? And is it really possible to hammer in that decorative brad (which seriously requires a good whack on the kitchen cutting board) and keep the baby down for a nap all at the same time?!?

OK. Enough already. Heres my advice on getting your arms around the whole scrapbooking/creative memories/documenting-your-family-history thing:

Find an organizational scheme that you think you can stick with over the next dozen years or so. Trust me: motherhood, while certainly easier in some ways over the years, does not get any less demanding. You just shift areas in which you spend your time. Time, money, and energy are your three most valuable resources todayand they will continue to be until the day you go up. So find a system to which you believe you can reasonably commit. If the whole idea of scrapbooking each and every page of your baby journals wears you out (as it would me), then switch to a system that is less creatively taxing. My personal choice: photo albums from Exposures. (www.exposures.com) Theyve been in business long enough that I trust theyll be there as long as we all still need their stuff. The last thing you need to worry about while selecting a system is the possibility of changing it mid-stream. I researched their product line until I was nauseous. I wound up using over-sized, attractive three-ring binders (offered in three different colors) that work perfectly for our family. I buy a few at a time so I know Ill never run out. I also buy their archival scrapbook paper, and use old-fashioned photo corners for every picture. You might want to look for albums that are offered in a variety of colors, in case youd like to color-code your family. (see http://www.selfhelpcenters.com/family.asp#1 for my recent article Color-Coding Your World)

Decide if you want to be a documenter or a scrapper. Theres a world of difference here. Documenters organize their pictures once retrieved from the store (pharmacy, Costco, etc.) and then put them into albums. Sureyou can add titles, captions, dates, and quick journal entries. You can even use color! But you dont spend an inordinate amount of time on each page. Scrappers, on the other hand, make each page of photos a veritable work of art. They use artsy background papers; crop each photo; add beautiful borders; make great use of sticker art, brads, and trinkets; and punch designs to coordinate with the page theme. You should decide which path youre likely to travel down as soon as possible. Like it or not, you need to get your systema system, any systemdown before you take the plunge, as each system requires a hefty financial commitment. (The only inexpensive alternative is to buy cheap albums from a discount store (with those old-fashioned non-archival magnetic pages) and throw in your photos. You wouldnt do that, Im sure)

Start collecting art and craft supplies. Regardless of which system you use, your childrens happy childhoods require that you spend time doing art. Make regular art days part of your familys weekly schedule. Those rubber stamps and ink pads that youre picking up on sale now will become a wonderful collection down the road. Lets face it: you need colored markers, pencils, pens, paints and papers anyway. They all add to your childrens artistic development. So perhaps documenting or scrapping your familys memories will be part of your regular art day for the next few years. OKso youre not going to take up sculpting for awhileor oil painting, rug hooking, or knitting. Thats alright. Just stay on track, keep picking up supplies, continue to browse art supply stores, and purchase fun stuff as you see fit. If you find yourself drawn to fancy papers and expensive stickersgo ahead and splurge. Youre going to need some of this stuff anyway, so try to make thoughtful and purposeful buying decisions rather than compulsive ones!

Try to stay on top of things. But dont beat yourself up if you fall behind. I always tried to use holidays and summers to catch up with my albums, but with major moves in four of the past six summers, those plans went to pieces. So I am terribly behind in organizing and documenting my familys life. OK. So life goes on. I just commit that when I have time Ill renew my photo journey. Its a process. Itll never be finishedso I dont let myself get all whacky over it. If possible, though, you should come up with some system: perhaps you are on the ball enough that each and every time you pick up pix from the developer, you immediately put them into albums. Youd get an extra cherry in your sundae at my house. Perhaps after you pick up your pix you throw them all into a large drawer, with the hopes of organizing them one day. (Thats been me these last few years.) OK. So thats a system, too. Just be sure that one day isnt too far into the future, promise?!?

Figure out where this all fits into your familys direction. You may be committed to too many thingsprofessionally and personally. This may simply have too small a role in your familys purpose. The commitment of energy alone to the whole scrapping thing might wear you out, leaving you feeling totally unglued and unable to do the other things in which you are truly passionate about! Thats OK!!!!! Maybe this just isnt your time!!! Stop beating yourself up. You may prefer to use your fingers teaching your child to finger-paint, your lap rocking your newborn, and your energy driving your kids to music lessons. You might rather use your discretionary funds supporting a missionary rather than spending it on pretty background papers for family photos. I cant tell you whats right for you. I can only help do the heavy lifting. So Ive done the research, evaluated some of the options, and am presenting them to you for your ultimate decision. I can help to equip youand encourage youto propel you to excellence. But in the end, this is your archiving. Above all, dont stress about this. Spend time your kids first and foremostand these decisions will fall easily into place in due time.

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