1.) Photo Organization:
This is a major thing when it comes to keeping your memories in place and knowing when they took place. Especially if you want to organize them by date in photo albums or scrapbooks. Ginny shared with us her way of keeping her "favorite" photographs in little albums by the year they were taken and displaying them throughout her home where her kids can easily grab an album and look back at themselves when they were little. If you are like me though you rarely print those photos out, but that doesn't mean you don't need a good organization system going. For me I like to group my pictures by date. Many times when you upload to your computer it automatically puts your pictures in by date order, and you can even set it up to make folders for each date even if your camera card has 10 months worth of pictures on it. I like this feature, and use it alot. Once the pictures are uploaded into their dated folders I then can go in and rename the folder with the event title. I do keep the date file name though so they are still in date order, but the event title helps me identify what the pictures are without having to open each folder everytime I'm looking for a picture. Then I make a big folder for the year and stuff all the other folders in the year folder. I've also done this where I seperated them by the month of the year to depending on how many pictures you take. Then when you are ready to sit down and upload your pictures online to Shutterfly or another photo sharing website you can easily drag and drop them over and have them organized already.
Here is a little shot at how my "My Pictures" folder looks on my computer.
I will admit I'm really bad at doing this, but I have found so many creative ways to make this an easy task. Today Amy shared with us her idea of keeping a little journal book where she can jot down something the kids did that she might forget later and want to remember to include in a scrapbook or just to look back on at laugh with them about the things they did when they were little. This also works for blackmail when they start dating...lol! Another really cool idea is to take note cards and just date them for each day of the year and keep them in a little file box on your counter or somewhere you can see each day. Then simply write down a sentence on what you did that day. Then each year just date the new year and write another sentence. This example below from Design Sponge shows you how you can do this using fun postcards as dividers, but you can do it however you'd like.
I also found this one on Pinterest today that looks really fun
3.) Momentos, School Artwork and other stuff:
You know you took that family vacation to Disney World and have all these ticket stubs, park maps, literature and more that you collects and want to keep and preserve, but don't know how to do this. Or your child is just starting preschool and you have so much stuff you know you can't keep it all but what you want to keep you don't know how to begin to organize. Well there are lots of ideas on how to perserve these pieces of memoriable history. Missy shared a great idea today on how she keeps her daughter's school work.
From Missy:
IHeart Organizing is one of my favorite blogs! Here is the link to the label printables I talked about today. She lets you know what labels you need. I added the following labels: twos, threes, calendar, early stuff, and photos to the blank labels. If you would like it then just shoot me an email and I will send it to you. I took her cover page idea and made my own which I can send you too. My boxes have lids so I can stack them in my closets.
Remember to LOVE ziploc bags. I use them to keep party decor, invites, gift list and cards for each party and place them in their crate. I also do this for our big trips to keep tickets, maps, and pictures together for later. This also helps spark my memory when I finally get around to doing it.
Memory Binders are another great way to keep those school memories all together. I love the ideas from Reluctant Entertainer's Blog on these
Memory Jars:
Another thing I've seen done from searching Pinterest is keeping a jar of those little notes and things you collect over the year. This can be a fun fortune from a fortune cookie that you hope to come true, movie ticket stubs or other event ticket stubs, or just a little note from a child or your husband you want to treasure.
There are also jars for those jars you can use to display your beach vacation or other vacation:
If you love all these ideas and would love more just check out this blog for 31 days of Memory Keeping for more great ideas. I hope these I've given you will help you out on your quest to start preserving those memories to hand down from generation to generation. I know there are many more ideas out there so if you see something you like please comment here with the idea or link to the site with the idea for our readers to see.
