I think a lot of our issues with getting our memories recorded, especially family ones, is steeped in perfectionism.
We want the perfect Project Life album for each kid, or we want to make beautiful baby books, scrapbooks or albums.
I can’t tell you the number of people who have said to me, “one day when the kids are at school/ in high school/ I’m retired” I’ll finally have the time to do my kids’ baby books.
Can I lovingly say that I don’t think that’s going to happen if you haven’t yet made the time?
At some point you have to either start, or admit that your perfectionism is making you procrastinate.
Might I suggest that if you set loose boundaries it will actually free you up to do something and get it done?
Case study
My twins’ baby books
I agonised (AGONISED) over getting the exact number of pictures for each child for each month of their first year of life. Because everything had to be equal, of course 🙂
It took me longer to do those baby books than to document the next 3 years of their lives. Maybe that was a good thing because I decided this was nonsense; it was time to get a system in place and just do it.
Once those baby books were done, I started on new albums.
I decided I needed a good boundary and I’d have to just make it work.
4 photos per month per child.
That’s it.
That’s what I now do, but sometimes I break free and choose 8 photos each in their birthday month 🙂
Knowing that I only have to choose 4 photos means that I:
- choose the photos that most depict the kids’ age and what they enjoy
- capture details (a favourite T-shirt; a favourite pair of shoes, always Thursday and Friday (their bears))
- easily get it done once a month
It’s ridiculous how easy this project is.
I choose 4 photos of Connor, 4 photos of Kendra, 4 photos of them together, copy it to a flash drive and print them out once every two months or so.
If it’s important to you to get your kids’ baby books done, get a Project Life album done or just get your holiday photos into an album, I suggest just 3 things:
- Decide on some limitations or boundaries (I allowed myself only 40 photos from our 5-day Ballito holiday and 60 photos from the 7-day Drakensberg trip)
- Decide on your tiny milestones (I set mini goals that are time-based usually, like work on photos for 1 hour on the weekend – you could do 15 minutes an evening if you like. Whatever will work best for you)
- Make yourself accountable to someone (post a before pic on Instagram so that it’s out there and you’ll feel like making progress)
This is a lovely project to get stuck into this month if you haven’t already set some personal goals.
Have you set some boundaries to get your photo projects done?
If you have more questions about albums, or anything about my system, please ask in the comments and I’ll answer them there.
Otherwise, what do you have planned for the weekend?
I’ll be reading, cleaning my house and finishing my January photos 😉
PS today is my half birthday! Here’s my last birthday post.
I have to fully agree with you – let goof perfectionism and just do it. If it wasnt for that I would never get Project life done. I am very close to up to date this year but have a lot of catching up for the period of time that I had the shoulder op last year.
And I had to let go if trying to have the same amount of pics per child per week. It just doesnt work that way – some weeks some kids do more than others.
Exactly – I keep thinking about a stage where Connor was doing SUPER cute things and I just went with it and had 9 pics of him and the 4 of Kendra. The reverse happened too, of course.
Imperfectionism for the win!
I really need to let go of perfectionism. I always have picture in my head of how I want something to look and when it doesn’t look that way, I tend to give up on the project. All my albums are incomplete due to this. Your tips are great. I need to decide on the number of photo’s to print, instead of just printing randomly. Then perhaps I will be able to fill an album completely instead of having a couple of pages left over or not enough space. Thanks for another great post!!!
Set yourself some mini goals and come back to tell me how you’re doing. I’m cheering you on!