Personal Memory Keeping with Project Life: Part 2

Last week I shared my everyday memory keeping using Project Life. While I do have professional family photographs of our family each year, there are 364 days in between that deserve to be photographed. I print photographs regularly and one of my littles favourite things to do is flip through the albums.

Last week’s post details exactly what our personal memory keeping with project life looks like. This week I’ll let you in on a few things I do to make the process as simple as possible.

1. I only print photos every 3 or 4 weeks.

It’s just easier for me to sit down and edit and order a few weeks all at once and it’s pretty quick once I get into the groove. I keep a spreadsheet going so I know which photographs go with which week, what size I’m going to print them (4”x6” horizontal or 3”x4” vertical) and whether or not I’ve ordered them.

Yes, I realize this sounds dorky. But I’m on my computer a fair amount editing photos and it works for me. You could just as easily do this using sticky notes on the pages of the album if that works better for you.

2. I make sure to do my week in review card each week.

Even if I don’t have time to type out the actual week-in-review card, I record everything I’ll be printing on the card into my Excel spreadsheet below the list of that week’s photos so I don’t forget. Because, guaranteed, I will forget the details of the week as soon as Sunday has passed.

I don’t love my writing so always do the Week In Review card in Photoshop but you could easily do this by hand as well. I’m sure your littles would love to look back 30 years from now and see what your writing looked like today.

3. I put any memory stuff into the album as soon as I get it.

One of the things I love most about our albums is all the details of our life that go along with it. When we go away I keep one of our hotel keycards and slip it into one of the vertical pockets so I know where we stayed. When we go on a date night I’ll try and grab a business card from the hostess station as we’re leaving so I remember where we went. Swimming report cards, Santa photos, art projects, team photos… they all go into  the album in whatever week we receive them. If they’re too big for one of the regular pockets I just stick an 8-1/2”x11” page protector in the middle of the spread and throw the momento in.

The key is making sure you put all your date cards in the album when you first set it up. I start new albums in January and June each year and as soon as I’m ready for a new one I sit down, put enough page protectors in the album for 6 months and then put date cards in for each week.  I’ve used both a typewriter and a rolling date stamp to fill in the dates on each card.

Each week in the album runs from Monday to Sunday; I like to keep our weekends together. And on a long weekend I usually just run the week from Monday to Monday to include the extra ‘weekend day’ and then the next week run Tuesday to Sunday. I’m not overly fussy about it being 100% date accurate.

I’ve considered doing digital photo albums but nixed the idea each time. I love how modern they are and that they don’t take up a tonne of room but I don’t want the kids to have to wait a year to see our photographs printed out. It also doesn’t give me a place to tuck in all the extra momentos I love so much.

Even now that they’re starting to take up a lot of real estate on my shelves, I will always make room for them in my home. They are treasured.

Do you print photographs regularly?