Sentimental

I haven’t been able to work on our past sentimental stuff lately. I’m keeping up with our current memory making. We celebrated our 25th anniversary with a vow renewal and are leaving in a few days for our 3 week trip. We have finished our camper renovation, although a few things will still need done once we’re back home. I’ve decide to donate our vase and candy jar so that someone else can enjoy them when they celebrate their 25^th. Our silver frame with our wedding picture is going into our master bedroom china cabinet. I’ve trashed our sign, the bubbles are put away for our grandkids, the party favors are gone, and the flowers are compost. I still need to sort through the digital pictures. I’m not sure I’d wear my dress again, but I’m not ready to donate yet. I donated my wedding dress a couple years ago. Thank goodness we decide to keep it simple.

Memories/Photos are a big category. It took 3 years working about 10-20 hours a month to get our digital pictures organized. I've spent the last year working on our photo boxes of loose pictures. I'm using photo boxes instead of putting everything into albums. I’ve dismantled a few albums we did make. Our family pictures are all in the photo boxes or are digital. I still need to organize some of our photos inside the boxes before I start scanning. My husband and I do have a wedding album and albums that I made of our childhoods and I may need to sort through them again. We finished our 4 kid’s baby books years ago.

My husband and I spent a weekend two years ago getting our 4 children's papers culled down from 10 crates into 4 accordion folders. It was great because he is less sentimental about homeschool type papers and I had been overwhelmed. I sorted and photographed our bulky memorabilia that I have in a bigger tote last KM round. We each have a small tote for awards and bulky memorabilia that I sorted last KM round too. Our gallery wall is a work in progress, I have a few things to hang, and need to add pictures to a couple frames. I’ve got two photo boxes for our grandkids memorabilia. I have a handled tote for my dad’s papers and stuff.

I have a good system that works for us; I just need to continue to get everything into it. This is more than a 2 week job; I’ve spent 6 yrs. working on it so far. I have at least another year of work on printed pictures not including scanning. I’m guessing this is a 10 yrs. job, mostly because we’ve collected but didn’t have a good system to enjoy them. I was too overwhelmed with this category to do much with them while raising our children, but have more time that they are grown. 

Shawn and I.

Our wedding photo tablescape.

Our photo storage area in the living room. I'm thankful that we have it stored in a visible place for our family to enjoy.

The inside of one of our photo boxes.

I cut down chipboard to create year dividers, I used labels, mini stamps for the year, and stickers.

I'm using a matstack to create event dividers and journal cards if I need to write something about the events.

Our memorabilia stored in the basement.