White Things: 2010 Edition

Last week, I went through my annual family-recordkeeping crisis. Am I doing enough to record this precious phase of life? Should I make the blog into a book? How else can I save the blog so the internet doesn’t swallow it whole someday? How do I want to print and organize pictures? How do I want to preserve the kids art projects and cute quotes? How dependable is a computer for saving all of these important details? What is the easiest, most cost-effective way to keep track of our family memories? The list of questions went on and on.

So far I do this blog and keep my personal journal. That is sufficient, but what we’re lacking is physical, hold-able BOOKS—everything I do is electronic. So I pondered for a few days.

Here are the conclusions I came to:

1. My recordkeeping needs to be fast and simple so I actually DO it. I want to LIVE my life, not spend all my time documenting it!
2. The blog is too big to print. It would be at least ten 200-300 page books. HA! That’s over $1,000 and far too much valuable shelf-space. Nope.
3. Instead, I saved a copy of all of my blog posts ever (6 years’ worth) onto our external hard drive. For the mass saving, I used Blogbooker.com—a free, relatively fast way to save large numbers of posts as PDF files. Now I save a copy of each post onto the hard drive as I write it, so the blog is always safe (or as safe as anything is on a hard drive).
4. I still want some kind of hard-copy album with pictures in it. Solution: yearly photo books! I came to this same conclusion last year, but of course I had to re-examine my thought process to make sure I still wanted to go with this plan. Of course I still do, so I am making a photo book of our pictures for each year—just pictures organized by month with minimal captions, no stories or journaling. It’s a photo album, not a photo story book. Last year I made one book for 2006-2009, and then stopped. This year so far I have made 2010’s photo book. I use Shutterfly because they have cute, colorful, customizable layout options and their books are sturdy and high quality. They are pretty expensive, but I just wait till there’s a 40-50% off coupon code before ordering the books.
5. After I’m caught up with making those yearly photo books, I plan to stay up-to-date by adding pictures to a book each month—a little risky because the book is just saved on the Shutterfly website and nowhere else, but these companies make their money by saving peoples’ pictures, so I’m not too worried about them losing my books. Then I can get a book of our photos printed at the end of each year.
6. For Jay and Rose’s projects and birthday interviews, etc, I started a plain 3-ring binder for each of them last fall, and I decided to keep going with that. All I put in the binders is: things they draw, other projects, their birthday interview, and papers from doctor visits. When they start school we’ll also add report cards, projects, and such.
7. And for the OTHER STUFF like tickets or certificates from family trips/adventures that we may feel like saving, I will start a third 3-ring binder using Project Life supplies. Basically this method uses a 12x12 3-ring binder and clever sheet protectors with pockets in them for pictures and cute cards that you can write on. The result looks like a scrapbook page but it requires no cutting or pasting, just stuff the stuff into the pockets. Easy, fast, and cute. I like the idea of having a physical PLACE to keep updated monthly, where I can stash little things that wouldn’t go in a printed, bound photo book. It’s kind of like a brief summary of life—I’m thinking 1-2 pages per month. I haven’t gotten the supplies for this undertaking yet, but I’m working on it. I hope to make each Project Life binder last a few years so we don’t end up with heaps of hundred pound binders weighing us down.
8. When I remember to, I write Jay and Rose’s cute quotes in my Evernote journal so I can do a search for “kids quotes” and find them easily in a convenient list. Then I can write them in the Project Life binder or type them into photo books.

Making photo books is so absorbing to me. I love doing it, but it turns on the organization-loving section of my brain and I easily get very very absorbed…addicted. It’ll be a very good thing when I’ve caught up with our photo books. Here’s the latest family photo album book that I finished yesterday—2010:

Click here to view this photo book larger

Visit Shutterfly.com to create your own personalized photobook.