Ready to continue your journey to becoming a guilt-free scrapper? In part 3 of 5 we will look at your scrapbooking goals.
If you are just starting now, pop back to start with Part 1.
What do you want to accomplish?
In this step we create a list. This list will be all of the things you’d like to scrapbook. Include the projects you have started and list ALL of the projects you want to do, including any continuing projects you already add to on a regular basis.
Your list might look something like this:
- Hawaii trip album
- Nephew’s baby book
- Finish incomplete pages
- Add to family album
- Complete Christmas pages
- Start album for my childhood
- Create pages for my upcoming class
Now look at your list again and using the number you came up with from the exercise from Consider Your Style determine how long each of these projects will take. Oooh! Does this scare you a little? I have solutions … so play along!
- Hawaii trip album: 40 pages x 2.5 hours = 100 hours
- Nephew’s baby book: 40 pages x 2.5 hours = 100 hours
- Finish incomplete pages: 15 pages x 2.5 hours = 37.5 hours
- Add to family album: 4 pages per month x 2.5 hours = 120 hours
- Complete Christmas pages: 10 pages x 2.5 hours = 25 hours
- Start album for my childhood: 10 pages x 2.5 hours = 25 hours
- Create pages for my upcoming class: 10 pages x 2.5 hours = 25 hours
Total up the number of hours: 432.5 hours
Now for fun we will divide that by 365 (number of days in a year): 1.18 hours or over 70 minutes I would need to scrapbook EVERY DAY this year just to complete my list!
Wow!
At this point you might be thinking … “I thought I was supposed to be feeling LESS guilty!” Before we can solve this problem let’s talk about one more thing making us feel guilty.
So Many Photos!
Okay, not everyone has 30,000 photos on their computer, but I bet many of you do. Some probably have more! Photos are in integral part of our scrapbooks, and a humongous source of guilt. We have so many photos we can NEVER scrapbook them ALL.
And that’s ok!
Let’s go back to your reasons for scrapbooking. Here’s mine again:
- to document my life
- to remember the little things
- to share my perspective
- to have an artistic outlet
- to spend time with my family without being with my family
- to preserve my photos in a meaningful but creative way
Nowhere on this list can you find:
- scrapbook every single photo
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t on your list either! When I keep my goal in mind I don’t get overwhelmed with the number of photos I could scrapbook. I can focus on the stories I want to tell, and find photos that go with those stories.
Reality Check.
The point of this was to give you a wake up call! It is NOT possible to do that much scrapbooking if you continue to scrapbook in your regular way. Something MUST change!
In Part 4 of this series we discover SIMPLE changes that will banish the guilt!
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What a wake up call for many to make a list and try and quantify it in regards to setting aside time to scrap. I gave myself permission a loooooooooong time ago to not get caught up in scrapping every photo (it would be impossible with all the photos we take) OR to worry about scrapping chronologically…that just prompted too much guilt on myself cause no matter how good your intentions are, you will actually never be caught up. So happy to see someone helping others realize they can do Guilt Free Scrapbooking too 🙂
I was hoping that this wouldn’t make people feel more desperate or guilt-ridden, but I also hope it will bring some perspective. There’s just so MUCH that you could scrapbook, that doesn’t mean you need to! I’m a very happy scrapper now that I can scrap without guilt!