Career and Kids

Finding time to make family photo albums

by elizabeth on March 24th, 2007

In my head, we have nicely done photo albums for each child that are also duplicated and preserved online.

Also, in my head (see why there’s not room for much else in there?), I’ve enlarged and framed all those classic pictures to reflect the time of our lives, and, we have a set of DVDs made from our home movies.

In reality, those shoe boxes and hard drives full of family pictures are right where I left them several years ago, and, I have no idea where to begin to do something with the miles of movies we have.

Thanks to the scrapbooking craze (”scrapbooking ‘guilt’ to be discussed at a later date), my stacked pictures have free access to corner rounders, personal croppers, and, mounting squares, but, as far as I know, they’ve never taken advantage of any of them.

They have more accessories than Barbie, but, they are completely unmotivated. So, I guess it’s up to me.

It’s probably something that every parent struggles with at one time or another, but, the added layer of a career pretty much ensures that there’s just simply no time to do it.

I did manage to get most of the picture envelopes labeled and filed chronologically a few years ago, but, then we moved to a digital camera, and, now, I have Digital Picture Paralysis (DPP).

Online albums? Digital Scrapbooking? Print? Don’t print? Store locally? Store on the Internet? Integrate non-digital pictures by scanning? What about video? Don’t forget all the old pictures from you childhood. File by year? By event? By child? Arghhh!

I have got to get these things in order, somehow, but, even if I had the time, I don’t know where I would begin. I think I at least have all the photos in the same location, but, in order to get something done about them, I’d have to set up a space and be able to leave it up for a while to work on it.

That would probably lead to another entry about why the house is never tidy, and, I’d have a hard time keeping all the stuff away from the kids, anyway.

I think I have decided to begin with my printed pictures, and, just do it. I have been buying a few photo albums at a time, and, abandoned my scrapbooking ideals for the moment. At the very least, should I ever be able to resume scrapbooking, my pictures will be in order.

I decided to start with the birth of my oldest child, and, move forward slowly. While I do have pictures from my childhood, those can stay at my dad’s for a while, and, the ones from before kids can stay in the shoe boxes for a while longer.

I’m going to start with 3 envelopes of pictures at a session, and, just put them in there. That should be a small enough endeavor that I can put everything away after each session.

I’ll have to get over my desire to label every single one of them, and, tuck in associated memorabilia, and, wonder what to hold back to get framed, etc.

Any hints about how to find time for photo albums?

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POSTED IN: Family Memories