Do you think that you'll organize your photos some day? That you'll document your stories? That you'll organize or declutter your mementos? I wanted to stop procrastinating which is why I started my Revive55 Project. By having a deadline and sharing my progress, I am accomplishing a lot but I still don't think I can do everything I wanted to do without spending every waking moment on the project.
I think that is also a very valid point to recognize. I will not do everything I wanted to do.
In recognizing that, I have to prioritize. What adds the most value? What do I love the most? What shortcuts can be taken? How will I do this in the future so that I don't fall behind again?
These are some of the questions I am hoping to answer before my project ends.
How will I preserve and enjoy my photos in the future? Here's what my collection looks like at the moment and how I got to this point.
This isn't all my albums. I actually have three of each colour on the bottom shelf completed. The bottom shelf are my Creative Memories albums and average 30 pages per album. The Blurb photobooks are on the right side of the top shelf with the year on the spine. Each of those books average 220 pages. One of my concerns that prompted me to start photobooks was the amount of space the albums would require with the increase amount of digital photos. One photo book is equivalent in shelf space to 6-7 Creative Memories albums.
When I started to scrapbook with Creative Memories, my first child was 10 months old. Starting my albums at his birth was a great starting point. Scrapbooking was my hobby and I made time for it. During the time of film photography, we didn't have as many photos to put in albums. It wasn't too difficult to keep up if it was something that we enjoyed.
Before starting to scrapbook, most of my photos were already in regular photo albums. Learning that those albums were damaging my photos, I started to transfer them to photo-safe Creative Memories albums.
I stopped scrapbooking my chronological family albums in 2008 when my passion and hobby became blogging. I didn't actually mean to stop, I just kept procrastinating and saying I'd catch up some day. As the days passed, the task became more and more overwhelming so I procrastinated more.
When I started my Revive55 Project last year, I had photos in albums from my birth to before my wedding. Because I wanted to make "special" albums for my wedding, showers and honeymoon, I procrastinated doing them. I purchased the albums and they've been sitting there empty.
I wanted them to be perfect and I suffered from perfection paralysis. I skipped those and had my photos from after the honeymoon in albums up to a few years before we had our first child. I never completely got caught up to my son's birth.
When I started to focus on my photos again a couple of years ago, I completed four photobooks for the years 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014.
So my gaps were for a few weeks around my wedding and honeymoon, 3 years before my son's birth, part of 2008, 2009, 2013 and 2015 to present. I also have to admit that I have a few gaps in my completed albums as well, like my sister's wedding that I had perfection paralysis and was overwhelmed with the number of photos. It wasn't my wedding, but I had enough photos to fill an album. How many pages do I allocate to her wedding? Which photos do I omit?
I also have extra photos over the years that I would love to add. In my first scrapbook, I included two pages for our trip to England. Two pages!! How does a trip only have two pages? The previous two pages were a business reward trip to St. Thomas. The cost of the album was limiting what I put in that first album.
I can't add pages to that album without it affecting all the albums that come afterwards. If I add pages, I have to remove the last ones and add those to the next album and it creates a cycle of adding and removing.
What I hope to do with the extra photos is to include them in an England album of trips over the years. I could also do a Caribbean album of our various tropical holidays. Those are someday projects.
I am currently focusing on closing the gaps in the chronological albums. I'm very happy to have completed 2008 in my photo albums this week. I also recently finished my 2013 photobook.
When I was making photobooks for my siblings when they turned a special age, they shared their childhood photos with me. Many of them I didn't have because our Mom would share the photos between us and not have four copies printed. Since starting my Revive55 Project, I added the new-found photos to my childhood album and in so doing, expanded from one album to three. I also added mementos like report cards, ribbons, certificates and newspaper clippings. My first album is from birth until Grade 8 and my second is my high school years. The third is my university days. I am so happy that I managed to get that done during my Revive55 project.
My next focus is to print my 2009 photos and put them in Creative Memories albums. With my anniversary in May, I will focus on my wedding and honeymoon photos during that month. I will then continue chronologically to finish our photos before we had children.
Once this is done, I will consider my photos preserved from my birth until 2014. Creative Memories albums from my birth to 2009 and Blurb photo books from 2010 to 2014.
I then need to decide what to do from 2015 to 2019. Is it realistic to get caught up with those before the end of the project?
I don't want to keep falling behind and with the number of photos I'm adding to my collection, I need to find a new way of preserving and enjoying my photos.
At the moment, I am thinking of continuing to make chronological photobooks but also having specialty albums (scrapbooks) or photobooks for trips and special themes. My husband has begun to make videos that include video clips, photos and journaling. He also makes digital albums that we watch on our TV either my mirroring our computer screen or through Apple TV.
I just wanted to write an update now as I am getting closer to closing the gaps in my photo projects. By reviewing and writing updates, I sometimes get aha moments when I get new ideas so hopefully something will click to help with my photo collection.
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