One of the things I am most excited about in my next house is my scrapbook room. I cannot wait to have a space to just SPREAD OUT all of my stuff and leave it up to continually work on things. It has been a while since I’ve been able to work on my albums and I am having major withdrawals! I miss it! There are so many different ways to record your story and/or your childrens’ stories. Most of you know that I’ve been using
Becky Higgin’s Project Life albums. I love that they are so flexible.
If I want to spend a little time and personalize certain pages it’s easy to do that.
OR if time is limited I can just pop in the pictures, add a little journaling and call it a day!
But alas, life is busy and scrapbooking takes time that is often hard to find. While I am still going to attempt to keep up my kids’ albums the way I’ve been doing (fingers crossed I have more time for that once our house is finished and we are settled!) I am always searching for new ways to save and record the endless amount of papers and memorabilia my kids bring home. I found two fun systems on-line that I thought I’d share with all of you! Just in case you are often on the look out for memory keeping ideas like I am. :)
I’ve shared before how I save my kids’ special papers, art work, etc. before I place them in their albums.
Below is a picture of how you can make this type of system work to take the place of albums…
Simple files in a box. Files are labeled things like: baby information, health records, age 0-3, grade levels, portraits, sports. Label away! The possibilities are endless! Such a simple solution to taming everything you want to save for your kids that takes NO time at all.
Here is another similar solution where binders are used:
This busy mom creates “memory binders” to hold all of her kids’ memorabilia. Nothing fancy. Just page protectors holding each child’s important papers with each child’s name labeled on the side. Genius!
You can check out the links for more details on each of the systems I’ve shared above. Fun stuff! Nothing like finding a system that works for you. And nothing like finding the time to actually implement the system that works for you. That’s the tricky part. :)
xoxo, Erin
I have just recently started Project Life and it has been so helpful in keeping up. I still have boxes of photos to do, but at least now I am doing SOMETHING! My children’s arts & crafts are in boxes currently ~ the large flat size that fit under a bed. The older kids are overflowing and hardly shut so I will either have to go through and get rid of some or get more boxes :)
So funny you posted this today erin! I just literally startedm y first ever project life album this week and wrote my first blog post about it today! I love your way of storing stuff for the albums! I guess Im off to staples tomorrow! Right now my kids art work is in a bin storage bin, but I need a new system and this seems like it may be it!! (heres my post about my first few pages incase you are interested!
http://www.thecanterinocrew.com/2013/04/project-life.html
I use to scrape book. I cherish the ones I have completed. Then, life got busy. so now it is all about Shutter fly books. Not as personal, but, still a way to preserve the memories.
Hopefully some day I will be able to get back into doing my own.
YEA for fellow Project LIfers! :) Cathy – I love shutterfly books too! So many fun ways to share and save pictures these days.
Thanks for sharing my baby boxes {and for crediting the blog}! Actually after I’d done them, thought about doing binders… how well does that work for you? My concern with the binders is bigger pieces of artwork or legal sized papers and such. Does that pose much of an issue for your or not really? I’ve been on a binder kick for about a year now… they are so space efficient!
Hi Kylee! Anything my kids make that doesn’t fit in their binders goes in a large keepsake box. So I guess I have binders and boxes. :) But the stuff that goes in the box is limited (just the things they want to save that are really large) so I’m hoping they only have one box with all of their binders by the time they move out!