“We don’t remember the days. We remember moments.” Casare Pavese
A couple of weeks ago, a dear reader emailed me asking for help documenting her family’s 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 country, involving more than 25 million Americans, or 1 in four households, didn’t even exist as an industry eighteen years ago, when I first contemplated how I would document and organize our own family. . photos… or “memories” as they are now called. With less than ten years as an industry, scrapbooking has more than 52,000 sites on the Internet; More than 4,000 retail stores support this multi-billion dollar industry and even brick-and-mortar stores like office supply giants, pharmacies, grocery stores, and gift shops have a sampling of scrapbooking products. The labyrinth is, for me anyway, completely overwhelming. Navigating even partially through its many avenues exhausts and disconcerts me.
When you factor in the time and expense required to not only take quality photos (a high-quality 35mm camera, digital camera, and video camera are virtually necessary accessories), it’s mind-boggling to add the additional cost of documenting your photo. once developed. The average scrapper spends $50 a month on his hobby, or about $600 a year on supplies. Scrapbooking papers generally cost between 10 cents a piece and over 50 cents a piece (while browsing online I found some great specialty papers for my “military enthusiast son” so I bought papers with a military theme; they cost 45 cents a pop plus shipping) Add to that the cost of stickers, pins, and trinkets… all totally adorable in their own rite… and your personal scrapbooking arsenal just climbed another two hundred degrees.
And what about ink pads and rubber stamps? I have to have those, too. Anywhere from a couple of bucks to ten or twelve bucks for a decent stamp…as well as several bucks for each ink pad (you gotta have all those wonderful colors, you know!)…you’re already in too deep in this to escape fiscally unscathed.
And we haven’t even gotten to relief yet.
oh my gosh
So what’s a rocket mom to do? Practically speaking, at what point do you jump into the scrapbooking craze while maintaining all the other parenting strategies that are considered so important to raising brilliant children? I mean, can you really instill a musical heritage in your kids, immerse them in sports and exercise, and shape their character and help them become more spiritually mature…and scrapbook all at the same time? Are there really enough hours in the day to get a good workout in the gym, eat dinner at the table…and make a scrapbook? Can you add community service to your calendar and add colorful borders to your family photos? And is it really possible to hammer in that decorative nail (which seriously takes a good whack on the kitchen cutting board) and keep the baby asleep for a nap all at the same time?
IT’S OKAY. Enough already. Here’s my advice for getting you started on the whole topic of scrapbooking, creative keepsakes, and documenting your family’s history:
• Find an organizational scheme that you think you can sustain for the next twelve years or so. Trust me: motherhood, while certainly easier in some ways over the years, doesn’t get any less demanding. You simply change the areas in which you spend your time. Time, money, and energy are your three most valuable resources today…and will remain so until the day you “step up.” So find a system that you think you can reasonably commit to. If the idea of creating a scrapbook on each and every page of your baby’s journals exhausts you (as it did for me), switch to a system that is less creatively demanding. My personal choice: Exposures photo albums. (www.exposures.com) They have been in business for so long that I trust they will be there as long as we all need their stuff. The last thing you need to worry about when selecting a system is the possibility of changing it mid-stream. I researched your product line until I was nauseous. I ended up using attractive oversized three-ring binders (offered in three different colors) that work perfectly for our family. I buy a few at a time so I know I will never “run out”. I also buy their archival scrapbook paper and use old fashioned photo corners for each image. You may want to look for albums that are offered in a variety of colors, in case you want to color code your family. (watch [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”. There is a world of difference here. The “documenters” organize your photos once they retrieve them from the store (pharmacy, Costco, etc.) and then put them into albums. Sure… you can add titles, subtitles, dates, and quick journal entries. You can even use color! But don’t spend an inordinate amount of time on each page. Scrappers, on the other hand, make each page of photos a true work of art. They use artistic background documents; crop each photo; add beautiful borders; make great use of stickers, pins and trinkets; and punch out designs to coordinate with the page theme. You need to decide which path you are likely to follow as soon as possible. Like it or not, you need to take your system (a system, any system) offline before you take the plunge, as each system requires a significant financial commitment. (The only cheap alternative is to buy cheap albums at a discount store (with those old-fashioned, non-archival magnetic pages) and add your photos. You wouldn’t do that, I’m sure…)
• Start collecting arts and crafts supplies. Regardless of the system you use, your children’s happy childhood requires that you spend time “making art”. Make art days a part of your family’s weekly schedule. Those rubber stamps and ink pads you’re buying on sale now will make for a wonderful collection in the future. Let’s face it: you need colored markers, pencils, pens, paints, and paper anyway. Everyone contributes to the artistic development of their children. So perhaps documenting or disposing of your family’s memories will be part of your regular art day for years to come. Okay… so you’re not going to be sculpting for a while… or oil painting, rug hanging, or weaving. Alright. Just stay on track, keep collecting supplies, continue exploring the art supply stores, and shop for fun stuff as you see fit. If fancy papers and expensive stickers appeal to you… go ahead and splurge. You will need some of these things anyway, so try to make thoughtful and purposeful purchasing decisions instead of compulsive ones!
• Try to stay on top of things. But don’t beat yourself up if you’re late. I’ve always tried to use vacations and summers to catch up on my albums, but with major moves in four of the last six summers, those plans fell apart. So I am terribly behind in organizing and documenting my family’s life. IT’S OKAY. So life goes on. I only promise that when I have time I will renew my photographic trip. it’s a process. It will never end…so I don’t allow myself to freak out about it. However, if possible, you should come up with some system: maybe you’re focused enough that whenever you pick up images from the developer, you immediately put them into albums. You would get an extra cherry on your ice cream at my house. Maybe after collecting your photos, you toss them all into a big drawer, hoping to organize them one day. (That’s been me these last few years.) OK. So that’s also a system. Just make sure “one day” isn’t too far in the future, promise?
• Find out where this all fits into your family’s direction. You may be engaged in too many things…professionally and personally. This may simply play too little of a role in your family’s “purpose.” The energy commitment alone with the whole scrapping thing could wear you down, leaving you feeling totally disconnected and unable to do the other things you are truly passionate about! It’s okay!!!!! Maybe this is not your time!!! Stop punishing yourself. You may prefer to use your fingers to teach your child finger painting, your lap to rock your newborn, and your energy to drive your children to music lessons. You may prefer to use your discretionary funds to support a missionary instead of spending them on nice background papers for family photos. I can’t tell you what’s right for you. I can only help do the heavy lifting. So I’ve done my research, evaluated some of the options, and presented them to you for your final decision. I can help equip you, and encourage you, to propel you toward excellence. But in the end, this is your file. Above all, don’t stress about this. Spend time with your children first and foremost… and these decisions will easily be made in due time.