You only have a short while before your family grows up. If you are married and had kids in your 20s, you’re going to have such a fun but hectic life, you’ll hit your 30s and then your 40s before you know it. Raising children isn’t easy and tracking their growth is sometimes an afterthought, collecting memories. Do you really care about taking a picture of your kids in their school clothes for their first day or would you rather get them dressed properly, make sure they have breakfast, that they’re not missing anything from their backpack and telling them about keeping safe etc? More likely, the latter.
Even though it’s a small thing, life takes over and demands your full attention. Even if you were to take that picture, where would you store it? Come to think of it, where do you store all your memories? Family memories come in different shapes and sizes. Some will be videos, photographs and audio recordings and others will be drawings, colorings and their short stories. How could you possibly keep all your family memories in the best condition?
A thing of the past
When you took polaroids of your family outings and events, you had a chance to make them part of your scrapbook. Many people used to use such cameras to take quick snaps, put them into a scrapbook with descriptions and captions of what’s going on and what the moment was about. This might have been seen a thing of the past for some time, but lately there has been a resurgence of the humble scrapbook. There are plenty of different styles of scrapbook that you can buy now instead of the simple plain Jane style that you would get from art supplies shops. Now they have ties, passworded locks, leather covers, high quality paper and plenty of accessories to decorate and make the book look unique.
With today’s modern photograph printers such as the latest Kodak Mini 2 printer, you can send your photos from your smartphone and have them printer just like the old school polaroid. They are in high-quality color, compatible with iOS and Android devices. They’re also so small they can fit in your pocket. Put the photos of your family adventures in your scrapbook while on the move, so you’re creating memories and storing them while actually in the thick of it.
An old school conversion
If you’re an 80s or 90s kid, you’ll know that there was no such thing as smartphones and online storage systems. It was the good old fashioned video recording camera that captured everything. If you have old family home movies that you would like to bring to the modern day, you can transfer video tapes to dvd using that service. You just need to send your video tapes, and they will do the rest. They make sure that the quality of the tapes are properly kept intact during the transfer. They will also do the conversion to your file type desire. So if you would rather have .avi rather than .mp4, this is something you can agree upon beforehand.
Together with your own family, you can sit and watch them and show your children how you grew up. They’ll also get a chance to see what it was like in your era of childhood. Gadgets, technology, food and more, all from a few decades before them will be quite interesting to study. VHS tapes are prone to get old and dusty to the point they will stop working. Just finding a vhs player itself is a challenge. So take your old tapes and get them quickly converted to DVD.
Card vs plastic
Do you keep your family memories in a cardboard box in the attic? Why on earth would you want your precious items to be covered in spider webs and dust? There are far better options than any kind of cardboard. Take a look at plastic tote boxes which are made to last many years without cracking or getting bent out of shape. They are designed to be resilient to water, air and critters in your attic. They’re also able to flex and contract as the weather and temperature changes. These are better boxes to store your family albums and scrapbooks in.
There are plenty of options for how you can store your family memories and one of them is the humble comeback kid that is the scrapbook. With modern technology you can send your smartphone gallery albums to your Kodak Mini 2 printer and put them in your scrapbook. You can also use scrapbook design templates to make the most out of your designs, it’s a great way to keep a consistent them going through the book.
Do you have any fun ideas on how to best keep your memories? I would love to know in the comments below.
