Making a Life Binder

 

 Awhile back, I attended a genealogy basics class. It was a fascinating afternoon, and I picked up a number of tips on how to start researching your family history. 

But one suggestion not specifically related to genealogy stuck with me: The instructor mentioned that as she researched her family history, she created a binder with the significant papers for each of her parents -- birth certificates, school records, employment information, etc. As soon as she suggested this idea, I knew that I wanted to make a binder for each of my parents -- even though I'm not doing genealogy yet. I'm calling it a "Life Binder", since it will tell the story of their lives.

The Life Binder will allow me to keep all of their important papers organized and accessible. When I'm ready to scrapbook their lives, I'll simply integrate the documents into my album.

In my basement there are tubs and tubs of papers from my parents' house. It has been very overwhelming to sift through all the boxes and know what to keep and where to put it all. Once I decided to make a Life Binder for each parent, my sorting process became easier.  

I made temporary "sorting" file folders for each of my parents -- primary school, secondary school, military, employment, volunteer activities, hobbies, etc. I moved items I want to keep into the appropriate folder.

Eventually I ended up with a tub of roughly sorted papers and folders for my dad. Since I have fewer papers for my dad than for my mom, I decided to start with his Life Binder.

 

I purchased large binders and a box of acid-free sheet protectors at the office supply store. I bought over-sized tabs which are wider than the sheet protectors and labeled them for each stage or activity in life, beginning with birth/infancy, and ending with death. I added a few baseball card sleeves for smaller items like work ID's. Then I got to work moving papers out of the tub and into the binder.

 In a short amount of time, I had consolidated all of the loose papers into a single, organized binder. And even though it seems simplistic, the binder helped me start to see the story of my dad's life, from birth through each stage in life until his final days on earth.

 While I was at it, I created a Life Binder for my own papers, too. Now as I'm sorting through those tubs, I have a place to stash all the important documents from my own childhood -- Girl Scout records, school certificates, piano recital programs, and the like. Everything will be organized for when I eventually start scrapbooking my own life. I think I may make a smaller binder for my grandparents, too.

I like the concept of Life Binders so much that I thought I would share it today! I'm all for ideas that help bring order to the chaos of life.

Organizing Family History Albums

 Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
-- Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton --

In recent weeks, I've been working very hard on my family albums. I decided to jump into my mom's family and tackle those photos because many of them have now been identified, thanks to a couple of older relatives. I still have a ton of work to do on my dad's side of the family so I'll get to back to that when these albums are at a logical stopping point.

I've learned a lot as I've worked on my mom's albums, both about preparing to make a heritage album and also about organizing it. In this post, I thought I'd share a bit about how I've approached the process. In the next post, I'll share some recent pages.

Organizing Photos

I inherited a lot of family photos from my mom. Bless her heart, she was a woman of many talents but organizing photos was not one of them! In fact, throughout my entire life -- starting from my late elementary school years -- I tried to organize her photos to no avail. In spite of my efforts to set up a system for her, they were scattered around the house in drawers with no organization whatsoever. Well, better late than never: Mom's family photos are now organized! I always told her I'd get it done! 😌

I sent a large batch of photos home with my aunt. She and her cousin did a great job identifying many of the people in the photos and in the process, I received copies of several photos I didn't have. Once I had them all back, I used my family tree to set up a file folder for each married couple (my grandparents, great grandparents, etc.), then I dropped the photos into the proper folder. Now when working on the album, I just grab one family's folder at a time. This has made the process much less overwhelming.

A well-sourced family tree is a MUST for creating an accurate family history album! I would not be comfortable creating these albums if I didn't have an accurate family tree.

As I go along, I've uploaded many of the photos to Ancestry so that others who are looking for them can enjoy them. As I've worked on family history, I've learned that many people are possessive of family photos and resist sharing them. That's something I just can't understand. It's a true joy to find a photo of an ancestor you've never seen. Why not give someone that happiness? *sigh* I found these photos of my 3rd great grandparents on Ancestry, thanks to someone sharing them.

Memorabilia

When I cleaned out my parents' house, I brought home boxes of keepsakes for both of them and for my maternal grandma. This photo was taken back in 2014. It took me a long time to sort through those boxes and separate the memorabilia by person so that I could use it in these albums.

Eventually I created a small tub for my dad, my mom, and my grandma. As I tried to see my way through all of this stuff, it made more sense to me to put the papers and memorabilia into a binder format. If you've been following my blog since then, you might remember that I decided to create a "life binder" for each of them.

I created a binder with tabs for birth, elementary school, high school, work, etc. This format allowed me to sort the memorabilia so that it was "scrapbook ready" for my chronological albums. You can read more about that process HERE.

 

I've had the binders done for a few years, just waiting to be scrapbooked. They truly made the scrapbooking process much, much easier. If you have family history albums to make, I highly recommend making a life binder to get you started.

  

 For example, because I had made a life binder for my grandma, I was able to find and include a letter she had written to her sister when she was a little girl and valentines from her classmates, all of which can be pulled out to read.

 I had organized all of her school memorabilia into that section of her life binder, and I matched it up to the photos I had from that time period then added some information about the one-room school house she attended. What a delight it was to find these little end-of-school-year keepsakes from her teacher! If not for the life binder, I'm sure I would have forgotten about them. I think that including some of these little pieces makes a scrapbook so much more interesting.

On this page, I included a "year-book" from a Farm Bureau meeting held at my grandma's family home. As I went through my photos, I happened to find a picture taken at one of those meetings. You can pull out the year-book and see that in December, my grandma (then a young woman) gave a presentation on Christmas decor. Her mother, my great grandma, made several presentations throughout the year on flowers and other homemaking topics.

 Album Organization

I have two albums going for my dad's side of the family and now I have started two for my mom's side. I don't have a lot of photos for her dad's side as my mom's parents divorced when she was very young. Because of that, I have actually finished putting photos into this album but still need to print family trees and a bit of family history for context.

 

 Each album is tabbed by married couple: Grandparents, great grandparents, etc. I'm sure there are many ways to organize a family history album but this just makes the most sense to me.

 I have started out each tabbed section with a photo of the couple or the entire family (typically a professional photo).

 

 The subsequent pages include snapshots and memorabilia associated with that couple and their children.

I'm really pleased with the progress I've made on these albums in just the past few weeks. I won't lie: It takes a long time to identify photos, sort memorabilia, and figure out your family tree. But all of that preparation makes putting together the scrapbook so much easier -- and very gratifying. It's a great feeling to look at empty photo boxes and life binders and know that photos and memorabilia are now safely stored in scrapbooks for posterity.

If you're working on a similar project, I hope you'll be encouraged! A bit of organization on the front end is well worth the time and will help you navigate a big and complex project like this.

jp

Time to Re-Group

 Blogging friends -- if you are still out there! -- it is time for me to re-group! The store where I teach stopped offering classes in mid-March when things started shutting down. Since then, I've been busier than ever making kits to sell online and am just now truly coming up for air.  Our dining room (and my craft room) has pretty much looked like some version of this since March.

Recently, I made a list of all the projects I've completed since this thing started and totalled it up. No wonder I feel like my head is spinning! I have designed 23 different kits (cards, scrapbook pages, tags, treat bags, etc.) and made 1020 kits to sell since March. That has kept me crazy busy with almost no let-up but I'm thankful I love what I do and can contribute in some small way!

But now... I've finished up all of my Christmas-themed kits, which is a huge relief. Christmas is our busiest time and is always a huge push for me. Now I'm truly enjoying a bit of free time to re-group.

Over the past few months, I've worked sporadically on my family history albums, trying to carve out a few hours here and there. I am pleased to report that I'm making noticeable progress! I've worked my way up through the generations to my parents and am now working on their section of the album. 

 

   Many moons ago, I wrote about setting up Life Binders for my parents and grandparents, an idea I picked up in a genealogy class. These 3-ring notebooks are just a temporary holding place for memorabilia that might eventually make it into the scrapbook. It was a Life Binder that helped me save the wedding invitation in the photo above plus a related newspaper article and a lot of memorabilia from my parents' lives so I could find it when I was ready for it.

I've been inching my way through these binders and have emptied my grandparents' binders and now my mom's, placing the memorabilia into an appropriate section of the family history binders. It's been a long time coming and it made me kind of giddy to empty another binder! Seriously, if there is one piece of advice I could offer anyone just starting to sort through a mountain of family history, it's this. The Life Binder will be your anchor.

Using the information from my Life Binders, I set up sections in my family history binder for highlights of my mom's employment...

...and also her many hobbies. In later years she enjoyed painting so I found a way to incorporate some examples of her artwork. Of course, I have many of her actual canvas paintings in various places around the house.

I still have several sections of my dad's Life Binder to work through, but I'm now  ready to start working my way through the photos I have from my parents' first few years of marriage, my birth, and beyond.  Although working on my parents' section of the album has been sad, I am really glad to get started documenting their lives. And I am excited to work on my own story. I've often wondered if I'd ever make my way to 1961 when I was born...and suprised to say that I'm almost there! 

So here's to re-grouping...coming up for air...and tackling a few of these important projects on my list.

Stay well, friends.
Janet

 

 

Heritage Album Update

 

It's time for an update on my heritage album project!

At some point a few months ago, I felt like my mom's photos were organized enough -- and I had mapped out enough of her family tree via Ancestry -- to scrapbook her family's older photos with some confidence. So I've been making a concerted effort over the past few weeks/months to get all of her family photos into albums, and I can now say that I have accomplished that goal!

I still plan to add family trees to the albums but those trees are not quite ready for prime time yet. As I finalize them, I'll print and add them to the scrapbooks.

First, let's take a look at where this little project started -- because I know that some of you are in the same boat. After my dad passed away in 2013, I brought home ALL THE PHOTOS. Then after Grandma died the next year, I brought home nearly all of HER PHOTOS. 

This is part of what I had in front of me. Truly, it was a mess. Both sides of the family were mixed together, and nothing was in order. Only a few photos had labels. I was pretty overwhelmed, not to mention grieving the loss of my parents. I couldn't even deal with these boxes for quite some time.

I've periodically shared updates on this project as I've gone along, and you can read those posts if you'd like (search "heritage"). The first step was separating the photos by family (my dad's versus my mom's). Then I split them again into the maternal and paternal sides for each of my parents. By doing that, I could deal with only one "chunk" of photos at a time, and that seemed a lot more doable. This post goes into more detail about that process.

In addition to the photos, I had boxes of memorabilia that I hoped to add into the albums -- within reason, of course. I put a lot of that material into Life Binders. You can read more about those in this post. I can't stress how much the concept of the Life Binder helped me see my way through this project.

 

These are the tabs for my mom's life binder. As I've worked on these albums, I've pulled memorabilia from her binder to add chronologically to the albums. The binders helped give the boxes of mixed-up stuff a bit of structure -- and they helped me immediately find documents when I was ready to add them.

So now I have three relatively complete binders for my mom's side of the family. I won't lie: It hasn't always been easy. Photo identification was often a challenge. And I won't even get into the emotional component that comes with a project like this. But I am SO HAPPY I at least have this much done. It is one of the most rewarding scrapbooking projects I've completed.

These albums start with the oldest photos from Mom's side of the family and continue through her high school graduation. My parents got married the fall after she graduated, so the next album I start in this series will pick up there and move through my childhood. I'm definitely not ready to tackle that chapter yet!

 I enlisted my mom's sister to help me identify and date the photos. That helped enormously, and from there I was able to sort them by age -- basically elementary school, middle school, and high school. I tried to group photos logically within those categories, then arrange them on pages.

 I also had a few photos of my mom and her sister with their extended family. It was a great feeling when I finally could identify all of the people in these photos and even find them on my family tree! As a result of this project, I have a much, much better understanding of my family history.

 

 My mom kept a few special cards and letters over the years. I incorporated many of them into the album. I made pockets so that they can be pulled out and read easily.

 

During high school, two of my mom's best friends (twins, actually) drowned in a nearby quarry. This tragedy affected my mom profoundly throughout her life and, as a result, she was terribly afraid of water. In going through her memorabilia, I found the funeral programs for both of these girls and wrote up a small piece about them.

 I also added in Mom's report cards using small pockets so they can be removed and opened.

My mom had some great stories about detasseling corn in the summers as a high school student. I found a few photos from her detasseling crew then, in going through her box of papers, I found her pay stubs, too. It was fun to match up those photos and memorabilia and add them to the album.

 Mom kept a lot of memorabilia from her high school days, including her time playing basketball. I used her yearbooks to figure out dates for her team photos so I could add them to the album.

 

 

Mom was crowned Homecoming Queen during her senior year. I enlarged a photo to use on this page.

 

 I also included all of her senior photos. A few years after these were taken, my dad's parents had them hand-tinted for her. I learned this from a note on the back of one of the photos.

 

I also included pages for my mom's sister and her late husband, including their wedding invitation.

In the section about my grandma's family, I added a page for each of her siblings. It was such a great feeling to be able to finally know who is who in these photos and be able to create this record for posterity.

 

I know I've said this before: My mom was a woman of amazing talents but organizing her photos was not one of them! From the time I was a young girl, I've been on a mission to get her pictures organized, and this is a big step toward finishing that project. I know that my mom would have loved these albums and would be so happy that her story -- at least the first part of it -- is now recorded.

If you're in a similar photo/scrapbooking situation, take heart! I hope my posts will show you that it IS POSSIBLE to document your family's story through scrapbooks. It just takes time, diligence, and emotional fortitude. Even if no one but you cares about the albums now, your family will thank you in years to come.

Now to clean up the craft room, re-group, and keep going! I need to turn my attention back to my dad's family albums. No time to waste!

Happy scrapbooking!

jp