4 Simple ideas for what to do with your family photos
Documenting your memories can be daunting, especially if you haven’t done anything with them. But everyone starts somewhere.
In this post, I’m sharing the four basic methods our family uses to manage, organize, and document our photos and memories.
This isn’t meant to say that you should be doing all of these!
But if you’re looking to get started or you’re looking to get out of a rut of just collecting piles of memories, maybe one of these will inspire you to make it happen.
Bins and Boxes
The simplest way to start memory keeping is to designate a bin or a couple of archive boxes for each family member.
The key is to not worry about over-organizing them. You can just use bins to start sorting the memorabilia you’ve kept.
We use bins for
Certificates and awards
Medals that mean something to the kids
Printed pictures (sports pins, team photos, etc)
Artwork and school work
Special birthday cards and letters
I like to use bins that are waterproof and sealed if they’re going in the garage. We have fairly extreme summers where we live, so I keep an archive box in the house for each family member to store special items I don’t want to degrade.
That said, “done is better than perfect” in this case.
Simply use bins you already have or buy something that works with your budget so you can start sorting and storing these items quickly.
Further reading
Pocket Page Albums
I stumbled into the practice of memory keeping ten years ago when I was about to give birth to my first son.
I was Googling what to do with the photos we would take, and through a little digging discovered Becky Higgins and her (at the time) tiny line of Project Life products.
If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, Project Life (and the now many similar product lines that have popped up online) is a system of D-ring (three ring) albums and plastic sheet protectors that are divided into “pockets” where you can slip in photos.
I loved - and still love - a couple things about pocket pages.
The simplicity means you don’t need glue, scissors, or anything but printed photos and pieces of card stock with notes and captions.
And while you might think that those little pockets could limit creativity, those little boundaries actually had the opposite effect for me.
I discovered a totally new version of creativity by starting to document our family memories with pocket page albums.
Today, I have one 12x12 inch album for each kiddo to document their school years and I add to a 6x8 inch mini pocket album with our holiday memories every year.
These albums weren’t sustainable for the bulk of our memories. But they give me the opportunity to be really creative while having some structure at the same time, which really works for me and might work for you, too!
Further reading:
Photo Books
I transitioned to using photo books to document our family’s memories a few years ago and I’m still working through years’ worth of memories.
Photo books are relatively easy to put together. They don’t require extra supplies, software, or tech-y knowledge, and you can find them at just about any price point.
I like using photo books to document big segments of time like the first 20 years of a marriage or even a legacy project that documents an entire life in one book.
But photo books are also helpful for documenting one event with lots of photos, like a family reunion, wedding, or vacation you want to document separately.
I recently documented our military homecoming in a photo book. We had hundreds of pictures and even though they were all from one day, I wanted to get them printed so we could enjoy them.
Photo books offer a simple way to document all sorts of memories (and you can print duplicates to share!).
Further reading
Download my free photo book planner
It’ll walk you through my process for designing a photo book, from start to finish plus you’ll get a detailed, printable checklist.
Video
Oh, video. This is by far my kids’ favorite way to consume our memories. I capture videos all the time - on vacation as well as at home. Sometimes those videos stay on my phone, but I try to edit clips into short 3-minute (max) videos.
I use three simple tools: my phone’s camera to capture, iMovie to edit, and Vimeo for storage.
Video is inherently shareable, it’s so easy to capture, and simple apps make it really easy to edit.
One thing about video. Our phones naturally capture vertical video, which is great for sharing on social media and viewing on a phone.
But I don’t want my kids to watch videos of themselves on my phone. I want our family videos to be enjoyed together on a big screen in our home.
So I shoot all of our family videos horizontally on my phone, so they’re easily viewed on a larger screen.
Further reading
At the end of the day, I try to remember that the primary audience for our memories is our family.
So the methods we choose and use have to work for us and no one else.
No one outside of our family will care all that much about our travels, our wins, our moves, our holidays, our memories. But we care about them - and they matter.
I hope you’re inspired to tell a bit of your family’s story. Your memories matter enough to document them.
Any of these can be simple ways to get started or get out of a rut. Which method appeals most to you?
If you’re ready to get started, make sure you download my free photo book planner.
It walks you through my process from start to finish and gives you a detailed checklist you can use to plan and publish your next photo book project.
