… not necessarily people but definitely relationships.
I am coming across a lot of people with an oversupply of scrapbooking material. To an extent that there are three kids bunking in one room, because the second bedroom is completely overtaken by paper products and ribbons.
Most scrap bookers are very fast to admit, that they do love scrapbooking, but never have enough time to produce the page about little Tom’s christening (little Tom being big Tom in the meantime and finishing High School).
And that they love shopping for the material much more than actually sitting down and doing it.
I love paper and anything crafty or stationery myself – I mean really love it. (I still have big sheets of special paper from studying Interior Architecture some 20 years ago… and a couple of notebooks from the Czech Republic from before the iron curtain was lifted!!)
But I would never even contemplate scrapbooking. The reason being, that a day has just 24 hours.
So let’s do the math and see where you would find the 50 hours it takes to finish a scrapbooked photo album:
7 hours for sleeping, 1 for cooking, ½ for cleaning and tidying, 1 for driving the kids around. 1 for helping with homework, 1 for eating breakfast lunch and dinner, 2 for watching TV, 1 for reading a book, 8 for working in a payed job, 1 for getting to and from work.
That already equals 23.5 hours. All this doesn’t’ include the weekly activities like shopping for groceries, exercising every second day. In these 23.5 hours you haven’t talked to anyone, didn’t drink a beer with a mate, haven’t done the gardening or cleaned the windows. You haven’t taken the kids on a day to the zoo or had just half an hour with nothing planned.
Because that’s what I would like to do with the half hour – just have nothing planned.
So give your scrapbooking material to a toddler, watch him have fun with it for a couple of hours and happily chuck the leftovers in the bin!
And now: enjoy half an hour with nothing planned!!!!!
Thank you so much for your outlook, I totally concur with you. It is great to see a fresh outlook on this and I look forward to more.
some great observations… i gave up on scrapbooking for those very reasons time…too fiddly and messy
I photobook my photos on snapfish and the results are better with great layouts and desighs and the albums are less bulkier… i hsve done a doxen albums in two years as opposed to one completed travel scrapbook album which is really heavy and bulky and unfinished family albums. I’m going to scan old pics and do family albums for each of my chn…adult now and quicky finish theri scrapbook albums in a simple fashion using what materials i have left and give to them as is.
I,too, started doing digital albums.Love the professional results, but find it slightly addictive doing them.Have to remind myself to stop amd fed the family.