I've posted things about this before but we had a "Service Exchange" in church and my friend sitting next to me told me to do something on my Photo-Journaling for my service and to do it for her. I fully intented to attend the evening of exchange but wasn't able to. I still wanted to keep my promise to her so I wrote the following along with examples so if she still wants to do it she'll understand where I'm coming from.
I can't think of the saying I'm wanting to use but other sayings like "Do I Need It?", "Do I Need It Now?" "Can I Do Without It?" will do. I KNOW I've never lived in a home so small as we are living in now (except maybe in College) but we are very happy. We're close to the medical things we're in need of. We're close to my hubby's sweet 97 year old Momma. We're close to our callings in The Phoenix Arizona Temple. We're close to several of our children and not too far from the rest and do our best to "bug" them as often as they can put up with us.
Since our Senior Couple's Mission to Brasil and even a little before we started "down-sizing" in many ways. Now we're down to a small rented storage unit for a few boxes that we take out a little at a time to work on and our holiday decorations. (BUT we are even down-sizing them each as we celebrate the most current holiday.) Many Christmas Holiday decorations, books, music, dishes, glassware, tablecloths, centerpieces, tree orniments ect. have been given to our families. We actually held a "Second-Hand Christmas Gift Giving"holiday this past Christmas. One of the rewards of doing it was the love we felt towards our children and grand-children as we let go a little bit of our past special memories and passed them onto the most important people in the world to us. We didn't know how they would react and felt a little like a couple of ole cheapskates, but the reactions we did receive from some were very precious and special to us.
One thing we decided to do was NOT put all our past in storage (paper and picture-wise). What's the point? We're in our 70's, if we don't take the time NOW to make-up our "Photo-Journal Memories" who will LATER? Everybody else has their own lives to keep up with. SOOOO, even thou our one bedroom apartment looks somewhat like a storage unit it's self, I find my passion for "Photo-Journaling" get's the attention it needs on a daily basis IF only because I'm a very organized person and I can only stand so much of "comfortable clutter"! Each week I've been able to discard several boxes as I remove what I want to work with and discard the rest out of a box. I have informed my children that if there are any other boxes left when I leave this life just light a match to them (no use cluttering up their lives)! My goal is to "Photo-Journal" what's in my many boxes and enjoy the memories and perhaps bore some of my children and "Grand's" along the way with a few of our many many good and even not so good memories that we have experienced in our lifetime. After all those experiences have helped shape the people that we are, (warts and all)!
Since I've "Photo-Journaled" my whole life it's kinda fun to see how my idea's of what I use to save for memories has changed over the year's. I've changed from putting every match book and napkin of an event into my albums to trying to get each event in our lives down to a few pages each. Since the boxes are full of mixed year's of STUFF I learned from our daughter LaNell who use to be a Creative Memories Consultant to put the happenings of an event on the front and back of a page, that way it doesn't matter that the event isn't done in date order, it can be inserted in an album where it fits in down the line date-wise when I'M READY. I use acid-free paper in my albums and I put page protectors on each page. (Some might feel this is over-kill but having so many in my family I don't want to hover over them IF they want to look thru my efforts. I don't want to be afraid they'll smudge or tear my hard and loving work.)
The best way for my children and grandcildren to see how each family member has changed in looks with each year is for them to look at our Christmas Albums. I have albums that hold only Christmas pictures, cards, newsletters ect. Starting with Jim as a child and me as a child up to the latest years. They are part of what I put out for Christmas and I kept them for that purpose when I was giving memories out.
