Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Memorabilia Mania

So I got tired of staring at my boxes of memorabilia and the mess in those boxes. There are at least three boxes of stuff just thrown in there. Some of the mess is from my moving a thousand miles and some of the mess has happened since we moved. I had no idea what to do with everything. I would try to figure something out and just get frustrated so I would walk away leaving it for another time. Finally after months of not figuring a system out, I came up with something completely out of the blue! I wasn't even thinking about those boxes. See walking away does help.

I have memorabilia from our childhoods, trips, vacations, races, furkids, family members, concerts, amusement parks, historical sites, and other pieces of life. I also have a box of brochures from trips. It really adds up. Some of it has been scrapbooked. Some hasn't since I need to scan it to have a hard copy in case anything ever happens.

My brilliant idea came to me over the weekend while watching tv. I was looking through a pile of family photos and found a few pieces of memorabilia. I was so frustrated to find more that wasn't in the boxes. So I started looking around our office to see what I could use to organize these pieces. You'll never believe what caught my eye. Something so simple. I just can't believe I hadn't thought of it before.

Manilla envelopes!

There is a pile of them just sitting on the shelf collecting dust begging to be used. So I grabbed a bunch and sorted out the pieces I found mixed in with the photos. I started thinking about how I could label the envelopes so there would some sort of organization instead of mess.

The envelopes are 9" x 12" so they can hold a full size sheet of paper without having to fold it or bend it in someway. Break out the Sharpies! I wrote on each envelope a name of a town such as Nantucket and Cooperstown or an event like NASCAR races. I haven't gone through the boxes yet, but seeing how well this worked for the pieces I found over the weekend, this is a great start! No more hunting through three boxes to make sure I found everything only to find out six months later oops I missed something. That's so annoying and incredibly frustrating. I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about. Lots of papercrafters have this happen.

So my project for the week is to go through those boxes and sort if all out. I'll finally use it up! I just can't believe I didn't think of this years ago!

Until next time *

Do you know where all of your memorabilia is hiding?

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