Some may call it a dilemma. I call it the big picture. Today we’re talking about something that a lot of us think about … or don’t want to think about … or should think about.  : )

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{ the dilemma }

The “dilemma” is best outlined in this recent reader comment. A wife/mom wrote: I’m starting to feel overwhelmed with all the choices and what is “best” for my family. I’m an all-or-nothing kind of girl, and right now I’m doing nothing to preserve my family’s memories because I don’t know which direction to go. Should I do Project Life for each of my kiddos’ first year and then an album a year after that for each of them? Should I just do a family album after their first year album? If I do an album for each kid, do I do a regular Project Life AND a school kit? When they reach the age of going to school, should I just do a school kit? I’m pretty overwhelmed! I feel very motivated to get organized and go through the piles of paperwork/ephemera in the upcoming year–especially since my five-year-old is so inquisitive about his family history. I need suggestions on how to best tackle/organize documenting a family’s life! I’m just at stand-still until I know what simplified approach I should take. Thanks for all you do!

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Okay, first of all — everyone take a deep breath with me.

Inhale. Exhale. Good.

Now I want you to go to your happy place and feel a great sense of calm envelop you. No? That’s not working? Are you feeling stressed about this too?

Okay then. Let’s get real. Here’s the thing: Most of us are facing the very same challenge. I totally get that this reader feels stuck until she knows her game plan. Wanna know why? Because there is something to be said about BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND – something I read about years ago when I first read Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. This life principle has stuck with me ever since and absolutely plays a role in my scrapbooking approach + organization.

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{ my recommendation }

If you are interested in being a documenter of life – or if you have already been taking pictures and/or scrapbooking for quite some time – It’s worth stepping away from your tools and supplies and computer … and just step back for a moment (or a day or a week).

Ponder these questions: What do I want the end result to be? Why am I doing this? Who is this for? What do I want to get out of it?

With this type of thought process, many of you will come to a place of greater clarity about your scrapbook organization. It might take a little time to realize whatever it is that you need to realize. But many of you truly will have an a-ha moment. Super. However … Many of you will not necessarily have the light bulb moment, but rather you will throw those questions and this blog post to the wind and say Who cares about a system!? I just want to play!

And you know what? That’s okay too.

“Figuring out” a scrapbook system isn’t for everyone. Sometimes it’s best to just do something. Start somewhere and have fun and that’s it! But for many (myself included), there is great value in thinking about the big picture … even if it evolves and changes a bit over time (which is a thousand percent perfectly okay!).

In addition to your own personal pondering, I’m sharing some additional thoughts on this topic – from me, and from our Creative Team. As with everything else in scrapbooking, there is no right or wrong, no best or worst. Do what feels right for your life, your situation, your family, your sanity. The purpose in sharing these ideas is the hope that something will stand out to you as something you want to consider for your own system … or perhaps a completely different idea not even mentioned here will pop into your mind.

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{ becky }

Here’s my personal approach to memory-keeping for our family: As I think about the big picture (the future), I would like our children to have a series of family yearbooks and a series of personal scrapbooks. It’s a simple plan, and something that I feel I can maintain. Further explanation follows.

Family yearbooks: One book per year, through their entire childhoods. These are thin photo books (I’ve done the past few years this way and will continue now with Project Life templates on Shutterfly). Some years will be more dense with loads of pictures and memories and some years will be just a handful of favorite highlights and moments from the year. And that’s okay. I’m not trying to have them all exactly the same thickness. The idea is that 1) we will have a collection of books that will span across many years, 2) the focus is on family photos + togetherness + memories, and 3) each child will have his/her very own complete set to keep forever. I talked a little more about my approach in yesterday’s post.

Personal scrapbooks: In addition to the family yearbooks, I envision that each child will have a handful of full-sized 12×12 scrapbooks to take with them. I’m not exactly sure what a “handful” means but maybe like 7-8? I would love these albums to be comprehensive in content and yet concise enough that it doesn’t become an overwhelming collection of large albums that require their own mini moving truck when the kids are no longer living with us. (Okay, quick – someone freeze time so that day doesn’t come any quicker!) The idea is that these scrapbooks will 1) focus more on the individual child – personality, milestones, accomplishments, school, sports, hobbies, etc. and 2) be a place to organize and store all the papers, artwork, and other memorabilia specific to the child’s life and experiences.

That’s it. That’s my plan. That’s my big picture. I used to create ongoing family albums (12×12 scrapbooks), which I really do love but the bummer is that those recorded memories won’t really “go” with the kids when they leave home. Ultimately I plan to scan all those pages (holy mother of projects!) and get those into photo books that I can print in multiples as well. A girl can dream, right?

In the meantime, I’ve been getting organized and back on track with the kids’ 12×12 albums and I’ve been video-documenting the process along the way so that I can share that with you. I hoped to do that before the end of 2011 but due to a series of life circumstances, including a really full Christmas season, the video is not quite ready. But I will wrap that up as soon as I can. If you have organization and scrapbooks and your kids’ school stuff on the brain, I think the video will offer some ideas you may be looking for.

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{ marcy }

When I first started scrapbooking I was determined to make it “fair”. Every kid was going to have the same number of layouts to take with them. I was going to be Supermom. After a while reality sank in. I was lucky enough to find time to make one layout. And then to duplicate that 3 times?

I realized that it was more important to get stories recorded once than to worry about my kids taking albums with them. And now that I’ve started Project Life I don’t feel any differently. It’s ours. I don’t worry about dividing up albums when the kids move out, or about who gets what. At the end of the day that’s not a big deal to me. I don’t anticipate a big family fight over layouts and pages. And even if there were I figure I’ll scan everything and burn them to discs and divvy it up that way. I guess it’s one of those “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it” kinda things.

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{deb}

I don’t have profound thoughts on this, but it’s not something that worries me. I have two boys and I just assume that the albums will stay with me until I’m gone and then they can figure it out after that! They’ll just have to share. I started scrapbooking when Alec was born in 1995 and then Mason was born in 1997. Their dad drowned when we were at the beach in 1998 two weeks after Mason’s first birthday. At that point, I had been making a book for each of them. I couldn’t go on with scrapbooking so I just put the books on a shelf and didn’t think about scrapbooking again until I started getting interested in photography ten years later and of course that led me to Becky Higgins and Project Life which I’ve been doing for almost two years. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back and scrap from all the years I missed. Maybe one day.

(By the way, I’m happily remarried to a man who didn’t have any children. He loves Alec and Mason as his own and they both say he’s the best thing that ever happened to them.) In other words … I have two boys who are teens right now. I don’t really stress about what will happen to the albums. At this point I am only doing Project Life – no other scrapbooks. These albums will stay with me until I’m gone. After that, my boys will just have to share them and split them up however they decide. I plan on doing this for every year from here on out so there will be lots of albums to go around!

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{ cathy }

I know for me, that most of the albums will stay with me. I mean, my kids will get their school albums and their baby albums, but I’m keeping everything else here. When I die, they can have at it. ; )

That goes for Project Life as well. It’s our family document and I think it belongs in their family home, even after they’ve flown the coop, which in my case with Aidan, gets closer all the time. Sigh. I’m holding them hostage!

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{ jennifer }

I don’t have it all figured out. Ultimately, I think just getting memories documented is what’s most important. I can’t let myself get too worried about exactly who will get what down the road. I imagine that my Project Life albums will stay with me even after my children leave the house. I just don’t know if they will really want to take such an extensive collection with them. I do want them to have something that is theirs to keep. I’m imagining a more condensed collection of memories; something along the lines of a school album in which multiple years of their lives can fit into one album. But like I said, I’m still figuring things out and just trying not to let the details get in the way of the actual documenting of life.

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{ ali }

I’ve had different thoughts about this over the years. Here’s where I’m at today: I’m making these books as much for my kids to look at today & down the road as for me. Right now the plan is that they will all stay with me. I do Project Life, annual family albums, minibooks, photobooks, and then I also have a baby album for my daughter, quite a few years of albums that are just my son’s stories, plus albums that hold my own stories from yesterday and today. That is a WHOLE LOT of albums. That said, anytime any of my kids have an interest in these albums I will happily hand them over.

For more information on Ali’s thoughts on album organization go here.

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{ monica }

My personal big picture is focused on my family enjoying our scrapbooks right now while the boys are still in my home. In addition to Project Life, I have implemented Stacy Julian’s Library of Memories which means my layouts are categorized by All About Us, People We Love, Things We Do (my Project Life Binders fall into this album category) and Places We Go. While our All About Us has the layouts organized by person I do not focus on maintaining an album for each child. My oldest son has a disproportionate share of layouts right now and I’m OK with that. Why? Because my youngest son’s story is primarily being told in Project Life right now.

I work hard to not get crazy about “even” or “fair” because if I did I wouldn’t be focused on telling the stories that speak to my heart the most right now. I trust that in the end what my children will see is my love for our family throughout all the stages of our life together. I trust in this because both my 7 year old and my 18 month old frequently pull down albums and look through them with wonder. They are not focused on seeing a particular person but instead focused on seeing our life. I see my albums only leaving my home when my husband & I are no longer here. I see these albums as part of my legacy for future generations, not necessarily a possession of a particular child. Right now I am writing my life story for me. I would like to think that there will be someone years from now who sees this as a treasure but as there is no guarantee I focus instead of my boys seeing our scrapbooks as treasures to be enjoyed now.

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{ maryann }

This might sound a little selfish at first but just stick with me for a moment and hopefully it will make more sense as I explain my thought process. My Project Life albums are about our daily lives from my perspective. It includes stuff from our family life, things that my girls experience, the little everyday stuff we do, and how I interpret them. It’s a collection of our lives as a family from my point of view.

That being said it’s not something that needs to be done in duplicate form so each child can have one to take with them when they leave our house. The plan for now is they stay here with me. So I get that this might sound completely selfish because part of the reason I do Project Life is so that in the future my girls will be able to read my albums and relate to the same situations that I struggle with … laugh at and cry over … but the way that I write in my albums have made this the most logical approach for me at this time.

Plus the thought of doing two albums is overwhelming and I know my limits and honestly I would fail before I could even start. However – keep in mind part of that is because I have an almost 3 and 4 year old. As they get older I plan to include them more in the process so the albums will evolve more into a family project as opposed to just my perspective on life. So I will reevaluate it again at that time. I think it will be something that is constantly changing for me. The most important thing for me is to keep it simple so it is attainable – or it won’t be doable!

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{ liz }

Since most of my scrapbook albums are photo books it will be easy for me to print additional copies when and if my daughters decide they want the albums. The Project Life album is different though, since I’m not doing a digital version, don’t plan on switching to digital, nor do I have a desire to maintain multiple copies of Project Life. The Project Life albums will stay with me. What I can see myself doing is using the information I’ve collected in the Project Life album to create new photo books (funny things you said, vacations, a year of Saturdays, etc.) to give to my daughters.

Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve already made a photo book this year called Snapshots of Sisterhood. I would also like to add that because I was doing Project Life (and hence keeping up with photo editing, etc.) that particular photo book only took me a few days to put together, as opposed to what probably would have taken me a few weeks to do. And I’m certain that I was feeling inspired to create because I wasn’t stressing out about getting “caught up”. I love Project Life. It has totally changed the way I approach and feel about documenting!

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{ michelle }

Since the creation of Project Life, I will now be using that method of scrapbooking from here on out. It’s truly the only way I can keep up with my photos. It looks like I’ll probably have 2 albums filled per year which will include some traditional scrapbooked layouts tucked in here and there. Some of those layouts may feature only one of the girls or a special occasion but for the most part, this is a family album that features our life as a whole. I do have individual albums I started for my two girls that hold mostly sports related photos, programs, school related photos and the like since sports is such a big part of our lives. I’m behind on those albums so I may start implementing the Project Life method for those albums too by using an assortment of the page protectors to speed up the process.

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{ okay – your turn }

If you have thoughts on your “big picture” system – please share in the comments.