Storage Binder Happiness!

So we are on Break Week in my Library of Memories class. We still got some wonderful resources from Stacy Julian, but no new "assignments."

Which is good because last week... STORAGE BINDERS ARRIVED!




When I read Photo Freedom I had been unemployed for months. I set up my LOM with what I could afford. Stacy features her own Storage Binders in the book Photo Freedom -- these beautiful leather 3-ring albums from Pioneer.

Well. These photo albums are about $14-16. Each. And most people have up to 15. There is no way I am going to afford that! Additionally, Stacy gets her albums from Costco. I am not a member of Costco; nor have I noticed one around here anywhere.

I wanted an album I could afford to buy as needed, and one I could get at 9:00 pm when the mood struck me to start filling that album. I went to WalMart (a place I loathe with a passion, but it always seems they have just what I need when other stores don't) and they had 3-ring, 3-up photo albums in navy and burgundy with gold accents, for $4.97 each. I started with 2 and moved on from there.

Those albums are ok. They are cheap, is what it is. I have heard many LOMers warn against them as a waste of money. Here is the thing -- these might be photo albums, but we do not use them as photo albums. We use them as working files for materials in progress. When I put my standard 4 x 6" prints in each of the 3 slots and leave them there, these albums work fine. But in LOM, one is constantly, and I mean constantly, moving around photos and pages. This is why the 3-ring binding is so vital. Photos get put into binders, Photos are taken out for scrapbooking, for triage into Category Drawers, even for tossing into the trash. Then remaining photos are consolidated. Pages are taken out and moved around. A lot. And the photos are also consolidated by "stacking" -- putting 4-6 very similar prints in the same photo sleeve to make room for more prints.

The plastic of the sleeves in the cheap WalMart albums is so very thin. It is very much like food packaging plastic designed for ease of ripping open. If one is careful, and is only moving around standard 4 x 6 prints, and is not stacking too much, the pages will be ok for a little while. But LOM is a workflow intended for years and years. Photos will sit in the binders for years. Binders will be flipped through quickly, and much more often than a typical photo album is looked through by a typical person or family. The 3-rings are popped open again and again. If they don't meet perfectly, pages will rip. If pages are flipped too quickly, they rip.

And then when I tried sticking into one of these binders my precious family photos from the 1930s to 1980s -- the photos that are wallet sized and square, and 3 x 5" and identification papers sized.... Then I really had problems. The photos were too small. They "floated" in the slips. They would cling to the plastic if I tried to fish them out, and the slips would rip. The pages and plastic would rip at the holes if I fussed with the pages too much. The photos were hard to get out -- unless I wanted them to stay in there. Then they could easily fall out the open sides and be lost.

Through the LOM Fans email list, I heard these warnings, and yes, I listened, but you do what you can with what you can get. I learned that one does not have to be a member of Costco to order from their website. Still not buying those expensive Pioneer albums. Nope. I learned they charge a small surcharge to nonmembers. Still not going there. Nope. I learned that the albums were sold in packs of 2 and came out to about $11 each. Nope.

Then I learned that... if someone goes to all the area WalMarts and buys the 1 or 2 albums they have on the shelf for $4.97... if there are other styles of album there available for purchase (like larger albums for $8.97 or 2 up versions or non-3-ring versions) from the same company) then WalMart will not be too quick to restock the $4.97 albums that I have already bought from that store. And I would find myself going to 3 or 4 WalMarts trying ot find anothe rbinder, with no success.

Yeah, that's not what I had in mind.

Then I learned from the list that shipping is free if I buy these albums online from Costco.com. FREE. The shipping costs are why I avoid buying things online. The markup is too great. But FREE shipping?

Then I had a bit of extra money, so I decided to give it a try. I went online. I ordered. I paid my surcharge as a non member. It was $1.00. No shipping. I paid -- I think -- about $22.00 total for 2 leather photo albums. I figured... I can swing that once. $11.00 isn't the cheapest album I've ever bought, but it's not astronomical either.

I waited a bit over a week for UPS to deliver (and had to go pick them up anyway UGH).

Took them home.

Oh. My. Heck.

The difference... the difference is night and day. Instead of cheap cardboard, I have thick, glossy leather. Instead of rings that catch and sometimes don't snap closed all the way and might not meet, causing pages to rip, I have solid, D-ring, tight rings that snap open and shut easily.

The biggest difference in the insert pages. Instead of slips open at both sides, these pages have sections which are only accessible from the center. Thus, even if you carry this album sideways, those small photos are not falling out. I was wondering how one could get vertical photos into a photo album like this along with horizontal photos. Well, instead of the glue that creates the 3 "slips" going all the way across the plastic, it only goes in about 1.5" from the outside edge. You can lift up the entire sheet of plastic, pretty much, and easily take photos in and out, with much less concern for ripping the plastic.

I didn't have time that night to do much, but over the weekend I went to work!

The same night I went to pick up my box at UPS I also stopped at Archiver's to replenish my Undo. I was determined to get the last of the stubborn photos out of the magnetic albums my grandparents had purchased in the 1950s and throw those out. As I was working on this, at some point I realized I was missing pictures I knew I'd had. I went on a prowl around th ehouse and found -- a whole 'nother photo box of old family photos I had tried and failed to organize by ...are you ready? Categories.

I cleaned off my coffee table. I started sorting through photos and stacking them by decade. I then sorted those by year as much as possible. I started with 1938 and began slipping them into the binders. I confess, at first I was dismayed that the seam didn't go all the way across, since I have so many small photos. But! They tuck right into the corners just fine.



As I was tucking photos in, I worried, how will I remember which ones of these I need to scan? How will I remember which ones I have to ask someone to translate (many have writing on the back in Polish or German)? How will I remember which ones I can't figure out at all so I can ask my mother for information?

I decided to use Post-It page flags to help me remember. I bought a package and since there were 2 different colors of hot pink, I used those to flag pages I was sure I still needed to scan. There were fewer yellow and green ones. I flagged the photos that needed translating with yellow. I put a post-it note inside the slip of those photos, so when I need ot write down the translation, I'll have somewhere to put it. I flagged photos that I truly had no way of deciphering with green flags.





Of course, eventually I ran out of page flags and I had many photos left. Well. As part of the LOM curriculum we all received a package of super cute page flags in the mail before class began. The flags were colored with Stacy's LOM system -- pink flgas labelled "People", green flags label ed "Things." We were to use these on an exercise with our completed layouts. Since I only had one album half full, I used very few of these page flags. I had plenty left, in the right colors, so I put those to use as well!




I found that the albums are great for combining 5 x 7 portraits with wallet sized photos as well!


First Communion -- my mother and one of my uncles, in the 1950s

I was so pleased, I even integrated family memorabilia into these binders!


passports from the International Refugee Organization for my grandparents and an uncle -- 1950

And cool other things -- like the mini albums that prints used to come in, in the 1950s. Many of my grandparents' photos were still in these. No idea if I will use them but they are far too cool to toss like trash.




Before Sunday, this album had a lot of yellow flags. One evening with my closest friend, who reads Polish, and most yellow flags were removed and tossed. The album is now full of post it notes with the Polish texts translated. Tonight I am at school. I did some homework, but I also brought my Storage Binder with me (just one). I have been taking out photos with pink flags and scanning them, then returning them neatly to their places and stripping off the pink flags.

Instead of a never ending and overwhelming project, as the colored flags disappear I can see my progress!

The 2nd binder is at home, and photos from the 1960s are in it. Photos from the 1970s will go in next. Since that is my own childhood, most are scanned and I even reprinted many of them to use in my own creative projects (so I don't have to worry about preserving the original). New prints will be "stacked" in the same slip with the original print.

When I want to scrapbook but don;t feel too creative, I can do my "fake scrapbooking." This is where I group these older photos by date, tack them up on 8.5 x 11" cardstock using photo corners, add a typewritten caption, put on a few stickers or older, flat accents just to decorate, use up my older stash of paper scraps, use quotes from Quote Stacks or quote stickers as journaling, put into a standard 8 x 11 page protector, and return it to my mother after having color copies made for myself and my siblings. This preserves and organizes muy mother's original photos.

When I feel more inspired, I can take the prints I've had made and make mini albums or combine them on LOM Connections pages, tell my own stories, crop and glue them all I want.

I guess you have to be a total organizing dork like me ot comprehend how happy this makes me. This weight has been on me for years. The old family photos. All in disarray. Stuck in those old ugly albums (by the way, I did cut a large piece of the ugly album cover off to keep and use on a page someday - when I see a giant purple flower print it makes me think of childhood photos) in random order with no information at all. Some inspire me and some puzzle me. Stories that could not be told because I couldn't get a handle on this stash. Meanwhile my family members die off one by one, taking the stories and information with them.

I don;t know if I need 15 of these -- but I am glad I bought the 2 I did!!!

FREEDOM...sing it with me...FREEDOM!!!!

That's a George Michael song, for you young'uns.

So last night I ran to my storage unit to pick up another full album which I wanted to merge into my library albums. There were several packs of photos sitting around the album, so I took them too.

Got down to my car and decided to see what the photos were. Most were relatively recent, or recent reprints of older photos I'd scanned.

I went through quickly. ...already scrapped this event (TOSS!) (and into the car trash bag it went)... bad photo (TOSS!)... already scrapped the event, bad photo (TOSS!).... good photo of my brother, dad and myself at a wedding I've already scrapped -- KEEP (tuck to back of stack) ... photo of my goddaughter's cousins (TOSS!) ... photo of someone no longer in my life (TOSS!) and ditto (TOSS!) and ditto (TOSS!) ... good photo of my dad and his sister -- KEEP (tuck away)...super cute photo of my brother dancing with hos girlfriend from the same wedding -- they've been married 10 years now! KEEP!

and so it went.

In less than 5 minutes I had reduced my pile of 70-80 photos to maybe 20 and all of them are keepers that I want to use.

Even the photos which were not scanned and I didn't have a back up copy of... I didn't care. Out out out!

I realized I used to hold on to even bad photos or extra photos "just in case". But I never know exactly just in case of WHAT so I was forced to keep them all.

Now I know what my "just in case" is so I can almost immediately look at a photo and know if I have any possible reason to keep it.

It isn't even a question of how "good" the photo is. Tonight at school I was showing some friends a couple pictures from that pile. Several were of a dingy brown room with a sloping roof, a dirty window, and some broken down furniture, piles of junk, and a thick coating of DUST. They asked why in the world I had such bad photos. I told them several of the GREAT stories I have about that room, which is why I took the pictures of it 15 years ago. About the ghost named Norman who lived in the attic, and the legend that he wore a tuxedo and combat boots. About how we used to have 6 of those ugly chairs seen in the photo, bought at a local auction and used as a favorite party game in college (which involved a bunch of drunken frat boys carting the piece of furniture of the night out into the parking lot yelling and howling, and then ripping it apart and dismembering it and beating it to pieces like a group of maniacs while the rest of us cheered and threw beer bottles at our symbolic corpse, until the chair or whathaveyou was well and truly dead, symbolizing the end of another fantastic party. There may have been Viking helmets involved).

Sometimes I have good photos which I took for "atmosphere" or for the person who was hosting the event. If the people aren't part of MY story, out those photos can go. If I like the photo and want to use or keep it, I keep it.

If I don't it is just clutter! And I feel GREAT getting rid of clutter.

Also I found a photo of my brother's friend Liz in a red bikini from 13 years ago, before she had 2 kids. I have set that aside to mail to her with a little note. I already scrapped the camping trip where I took the photo, after all. And she might like it.

I got home and removed all the layouts from that album while watching Dancing with the Stars. I had sorted all my other layouts into piles for People, Places and Things. I've also decided my 4th album will be Celebrations, and will contain family gatherings like Easter, Christmas, and so forth. I've had a difficult time dealing with Birthdays. On the one hand I think family parties should go in Celebrations (or whateer I end up calling it). On the other hand, I really want kids birthdays to be a part of their People section, to show growth and change over time. And I don't want to store adult birthdays differently from kids birthdays. (Yes I do have a lot of adult birthday layout s-- like MY birthday, for instance.) So for right now, birthdays go in People.

By the way, any layout on me -- I am putting in People.

I spent time putting together my first subsection, all layouts on my nephew (the older -- I have two now!). Those I put in chronological order so it would begin with his birth and move on through his first 5 years. That section is big and takes up half my first library album. then I got tired of fussing with the rest of them. I may just ump them in there in random order.

Which is the point, hooray.

Then I will move on to the other layouts. Now that I have dragged several albums out of storage I have a need for the other library albums. I was getting kind of fed up and tired last nght and then I recalled that Stacy has emphasized not spending more than 15 minutes at a time on these sorts of tasks.

Library of Memories is a river. That is how I tell it to people. It' snot a reservoir, containing your entire water supply all in one spot. It's a river and it is constantly flowing. Keep it flowing and don't dam it up.

Scrapbooking Sacrilege!

A funny thing happened late last night...

First we take LOM and learn it is okay to throw out some photos.

Then I did post a bit on here about throwing out scrap supplies. Not donating. Just tossing out.

But now I have really crossed into scrapping sacrilege. Last night I started throwing out completed scrapbook pages.

When I went into my storage unit this past week I found about 3-4 albums I had created. By the way, when I say "albums" I am not talking about discrete albums, like, my sister's wedding, or a special trip. When I created "albums" the layouts were not in any order. An album is just a physical receptacle in which to put finished layouts for ease of viewing. I pulled the layouts out of these albums to put into my Library of Memories albums. A funny thing happened. I realized there were quite a few pages I really don't want or need to have.

So I looked at them, and I thought, well I had fun making this at the time, but I don't need to keep it, so GOODBYE!

To explain -- I very rarely created a 1 page or 2 page layout of an event. If I took 35 pictures and 30 were good ones, then I scrapped them all. Plus I wanted all the memorabilia displayed. So a birthday party might take 10 pages total, all using the same papers and accents and lettering! Seriously!

Now, do I need 10 pages on my best friend's husband's 40th birthday party? No I don't. Do I need to keep the pages I scrapped with pictures of all his cousins and friends and people who are really not a part of MY story? No, I don't. I color copied these pages at the time and gave him the copies so he has them.

Do I need to keep every page on every relationship that is no longer a part of my life? No, I don't. I went to a gnome festival (of all things) 4-5 years ago with a person who is no longer my friend. I scrapbooked 8 pages of photos and memorabilia. I think 2-4 pages is enough to document the fact that I went to the event itself and keep the memorabilia, and the most relevant photos. I don't need to have several more pages featuring photos of this person no longer in my life and no longer important to me.

If I have the photos themselves on my computer anyway I really don't need to keep it all. So! I have kept the pages that are important to me and I am tossing the rest.

I also found that sometimes buried in a set of 8-10 pages on some event, there is a grouping of photos that is intrinsically about a person, or a thing we do, or a family joke or something important. But it's not really related to the event -- I scrapped the photos in the event bc I took the pictures together. So in those cases I took the page like that out of the event I scrapbooked. Most of these need a new title or some additional journaling, and then those individual pages can go into my People album or Things placed elsewhere.

That's right, kids, I am throwing away actual pages I have scrapped. Don't call the Scrapbooking Gestapo on me, ok?

That Stacy...I blame it all on her!

Reflections on Letting Go

I got a comment recently that reminded me I have not followed up on my last post with Stacy's answer to my burning questions. Just no time! Last week was midterms, and I am working full time too. I don't have the ability to sneak on to blog or email or anything else really while at this job. I think today I was waiting for some information to come in, so I had several minutes free, but that is very rare. And in fact it is 12:21 am right now, and I really need to go to bed, since I have work and class tomorrow.

So the short answer -- what did Stacy have to say? She was so very wise. She told me I was overwhelmed by all the potential stories I have in my pictures, my memorabilia, and my memories. This is true. She gave me some wonderful advice, most of which i won't post since they are her words, not mine, to share.

And she gave me an action I could take. She advised me to get a package of index cards and a holder for them, and whenever I have an idea, whether for a page or an album or a project, I should write it on one card. On the front I should write why I want to do the project or what is important about it to me. Basically start the journaling, as well as put down some info that helps to prioritize the idea. On the back of the card I should list the pictures and materials I need to do the project. Sometimes these are photos I already have -- and sometimes they are photos I need to take. (I have a big photography to-do list this summer!) And then move on.

This has been a real sanity-saver for me. In my purse I now carry a 5 x 7 mylar envelope with velcro flap closure (I bought out the stock at every local Target 4 years ago -- love these!) which holds a pack of 100 index cards, 5 x 7 size. Now, whenever I get an idea, where ever I am, I whip out a card and scribble it down. Most of my big ideas come... while I am commuting. That has been torturous really, because I get all these great ideas and then they just sit there and I try not to lose them until I can remember them later, and I never do...until I am in the car again. ugh! I don't write while actually driving the car, but if I am stopped for some reason, I will pull out an index card and jot down my idea. If I am surfing the internet at home or at school or at the library ... I see an idea or get some inspiration... I can whip out a card and jot it down. Scents and sights and daydreams in my daily life, quotes I read, fleeting memories... everything leads me to an idea. I can get it out of my head. The more I write, the more ideas i get!

Tonight I wrote a long post on the Library of Memories message boards, reflecting on the lesson for this week and how I have applied it to my larger life. Part of the lesson talked about "letting go." That is what we are learning in the Library of Memories class, actually. To let go. No one can be inspired by 10,000 digital photos. No one. Buried in that stash is your treasure. How can you find it? How can you sift out the stories that need to be told, that only you can tell, when you are buried under the weight of 5 years of Christmas pictures where everyone looks the same and does the same year after year, and you have to scrap those pictures 3 times for 3 children?

So here it is. I am throwing out scrapping supplies. Yep! A big huge box. It sits in my car right now. That's it! I am putting it all in a landfill. Which kills me because I am a huge reduce-reuse-recycle person. But I am doing it.

Three years ago I went to CKU. The 5 months prior to CKU I was so busy taking pictures for the album track I was taking, and getting ready for CKU, and doing CKU swaps, that I really didn't scrapbook my own pictures much. After CKU ended I had so much stuff (you get a lot of stuff there!) that I spent weeks trying to find ways to add it all into my storage. I was so burned out after that experience that I didn't want to scrapbook at all. I think all I did that summer was finish my Becky Higgins album, and I am glad I did.

In the midst of that, I decided I really needed to sell this place and move. I thought that would happen in 3-6 mos (cue mocking laughter). So I packed up all my non essential stuff, my photos and albums and supplies, most of them, and got a storage unit, and there it has all been. For almost three years.

Though I created many little gift albums for fun in the interim, I did not scrapbook my own stories, for me, at all until I bought Photo Freedom last summer. Then it took me 6 weeks to do a layout. Yep, 6 weeks, even though I was very inspired by the photos and the story. I did not have a dedicated scrapbooking area any more, my tools and supplies were tucked away in a million places, and I was so rusty I could not figure out what to do at all. But eventually I finished it and I wrote a post on here about it, and Stacy Julian featured that post in her blog. I was and am still so happy with that LO.

Then I started scrapping again a bit. I did have some supplies on hand and I started shopping a bit more. I set up my LOM and started printing my current pics and scrapping them and having fun.

My big hold up in the class and moving forward has been that all my memorabilia and all my older photos -- which are the stories I really feel an urgency to tell -- are all buried in that storage unit. A few weeks ago I did go in there and try looking for some photos and especially my memorabilia, but I just got so overwhelmed. Since I really thought the stuff would only be packed for a few months I did not organize or purge before storage. People were helping me pack and whatever was in proximity would up packed in a box together. So everything is just shoved into boxes. It's not a total mess but it's still overwhelming.

And the 2 boxes I pulled from storage on my first attempt last month are still in my car anyhow!

So, my point, I did have one.... Ok. I was opening up boxes and finding all these supplies I had shoved in there and getting frazzled. There packs of pictures tucked in here there and everywhere. Office supplies and scrap supplies and memorabilia and mailing supplies all together AAAAHHH!

I found this giant square basket, which I love (and have missed) and I was thinking, this would be perfect for taking home some of the stuff I really could use right now (like all the adhesives! I have so much!), but it was full of ...FIBERS. Not ribbon. FIBERS. Fibers I supposedly had for scrapbooking. And I did use them. Way way back in the day. But I have found that, while I like ribbon, all those eyelash fibers and yarns and multicolored fibers, I never use them. I like them, and they are pretty, so I keep them, but I can't use them. I want to find a use for them, but that requirement just impedes my creative inspiration.

Stacy made a comment in this week's lesson materials about how we don't have to be the RECEPTACLE for every little thing that comes into our house. This really struck home with me. Every little shred of fiber or ribbon someone sent me in a swap or that I got for free, I felt I had to keep it. Because it's usable. Therefore I MIGHT use it. So I keep it. In case.

I did use fibers, quite a bit. They were popular and I put them into my creative system at the time and I enjoyed it then, but I don't want to do that any more. So I started being really ruthless and pulling out maybe 1-2 ribbons I wanted to keep out of every big ziplock bag -- I had all fibers grouped by color in large ziplock bags -- and throwing the rest into a big box I had emptied out. Then I found a bunch of plastic drawer organizers full of supplies and I went through them and was just ruthless, tossing garbage and supplies I won't use in the box -- perfectly good punches, markers that still work, scrapbooking idea books still in the shrink wrap (goodbye Rebecca Sower!), magazines, adhesives I won't use -- STUFF. I got the giant square basket of just fibers down to one smallish ziplock bag mostly of ribbon I like. I emptied out all these plastic drawer organizers and now have 2 ziplock bags of items I can really see myself using and soon, and I brought those home to reintegrate into my supply storage here.

It struck me how this was very similar to the stance I am taking on photos these days due to LOM. I have SO MANY photos. I can't ever use them all! So I have to be very selective. I want to make room for inspiration. I can't be inspired by 10,000 photos even if they are all organized on my computer by date. If I haven't scrapbooked a photo in 5 years, it has to move on. I have to make room for new ideas, new stories and new inspiration. I cannot let myself be dragged down by feeling obligated to old stories and old photos that do not inspire me.

I might have more discretionary time than a woman with 3 kids to care for, but what I don't have more of is CREATIVE ENERGY. This may shock some of the married folk out there but just living an adult life even without kids to tend to, is tiring. I don't have kids, no, but not only do I work full time but on top of that I ALSO am responsible for doing all the laundry, the grocery shopping, the cooking, paying the bills, cleaning out my car, oil changes, taking back library books, getting my taxes done, vacuuming the carpet, cleaning up after the dog's accidents, taking out the garbage, cleaning that disgusting smell out of the fridge, getting the dishwasher fixed, renewing my auto insurance, and on and on and on.

That creative energy is finite. Too much CRAP drains it right out of me.

When I first started scrapping, I was a very frugal scrapbooker. I still am, to a certain extent. If I got something in a swap, and I LIKED it, well I want to use it! The liking it is the kicker. Stuff I hate is easy to dump. Stuff I really do like, think is pretty, which I "could" use... that is hard. But if I haven't felt the need to use a certain supply in 3 years, and I find myself really struggling to come up with a way I might ever use it, no matter how pretty or cool it is... I gotta move it out of here to make room for the new. Even if it is a whole package I never opened at all. Seriously I maybe used Twistel twice in my life. I don't need to keep any of it, no matter how much I like the color, even if it's new, even if I never opened it. I still have about 1208329839210 eyelets here at home and I do like them and use them, so those packages of eyelets in storage these years? Goodbye! (I kept all the brads though -- let's not be crazy here.)

I still did not find my photo albums -- BUT I did find lots and lots of recent-ish pictures (last 8 yrs) that I had already paid to print so now I don't need to do that AND I took out a box of my old albums so I can put the LOs into my LOM AND I found several memorabilia files I have been wanting to use. And I also found, while looking at my old scrapbook albums, that I still really really like those pages from 5-6 years ago. Since I am a classic scrapbooker and I don't follow trends too much, my pages still look like "me". And they all tell the story very very well.

I could go through that box of stuff now sitting in my car waiting for the dumpter, and sort it and decide some things can go to charity and what is garbage and what I can give to a local school and and and... but then I will second guess my choices. And I will also be wasting time, going through something twice which I only needed to do once. And then it will sit while I try and make time to run over to the thrift store. I have been down this road before and those chains just drag me down.

So it's going. In the dumpster. I swear.

As soon as the 2 extra strength Tylenol kick in and my back stops screaming. Any minute now. Annny minnnute....



Any minute now.