Paralyzed by too much paper and too many photos!

Our family takes photos and we have taught the kids to take photos.  I retired in 2014 and I have boxes and boxes of photos and "stuff" from our kids preschool through high school.  The oldest is 42 and has 2 grandchildren so the photos and stuff keep coming.  I have paper to make scrapbooks - I have given a few boxes of paper and stamps away to kids organizations but every time I look the paper multiplies! I have gotten paper with certain projects in mind but the problem is that the paper isn't made into those projects yet because I kept having other projects that were easier or time sensitive.  There is a t-shirt that says "You can't go to heaven until you've finished your scrapbooks".  If that is the case my going to heaven will be sometime in the far far future in a galaxy far far away.

I love the Story by Stacy albums. I have made a number of them.  In the process of working with her small albums, I have begun to hear a process by which I might manage my photos and papers and not be paralyzed with inaction.  Stacy Julian has an old book that I got used called "Photo Freedom:A Big picture approach to scrapbooking your photographs".  I also have gotten from listening to her and from working through the projects some tidbits that are freeing for me. She din't say it this way but it is my take away from her process that I am doing that has begun to make sense.  I think all I need to do is get unfrozen just a bit and I will make progress. In the words of Disney's Elsa "Let it Go!!"

How I will proceed:
1. You really don't need to use ALL your photos that you have ever taken.
2. You don't need to work chronologically in making albums.
3.  How many albums is too many?  Not sure but I don't need to work on the Guinness world record of albums.
4.  Just start and do it.
5. It is Ok to throw away photos.  (ugh I don't know how I can learn to do this)

In my cleaning and reorganizing my room, I found that I had 2 Something Fierce packets.  One was the Workshop Your Way and the other was the paper, and coordinating cardstock. I am making a stab at 1 scrapbook of our kids - at all ages mixed in and our grand kids that will showcase activities we did in the house (not their sports or plays or music) but birthday parties and just having fun in all the seasons of the year.

I have not made it easy on myself in the amount of photos I have.   I digitized photos but never cut the original. I would printed out a copy and save the original.  This has saved me sometimes in that I needed the photo again.  The problem is that even when you scrapbook a photo, you still have to "store" the same photo you just used.  Your pile doesn't decrease in size, it just gets larger.

I have always thought about what my adults kids would do with all of this when I am gone.  Stacy Julian talked about doing albums that she wanted to enjoy and then making albums for her kids.  I am still feeling paralyzed about starting - where to start - not having enough room to put photos on the floors, tables and probably walls and ceilings to sort them but I am beginning to make an attempt.   I am making 1 album of the So Fierce paper. Both our son and daughters and granddaughters all have played with dinosaurs, dragons and other things so the Something Fierce paper with dinosaurs will work for all of them. The paper gives a theme but I have used pink and blue and all other colors.   I am doing it when there is still more paper available on the "Going Soon" part of my website just in case I think I might need something more.

What gives me wiggle room is the Close To My Heart Flip Flaps.  I can still put more photos and journaling on each page if I find out I need more room.

Here are the Workshop Your Way papers:

Next I used the patterns from Vol 3 Make If From Your Heart - Pattern 2,14,and 6 and an old Workshop Your Way and I just put paper on the page!

To finish the album off I made a front and back page.

I decided to try the Memory Protectors Design 2 - full page.

I think I like the Pocket Plus memory protectors better but I will see when I actually get photos on the pages.  I was thinking that summer would be a good time to sort out the photos but summer is almost hear and there is already many things on the calendar plus having the grand kids over.  We will see what happens with this project but I do feel better at having started.  I am thinking of getting all my Christmas pages and papers and Halloween pages and papers and making a scrapbook of each.  Wish me luck and I hope you have good luck saving your precious photos and memorabilia.  Let me know how you are doing.