Scrapbook Albums

When I was first introduced to scrapbooking it was just so I could have a nice way to keep all of the boys school things. All the pages went into those display folders you could pick up anywhere.
It wasn't long before it became an obsession and I was scrapping anything I could think of. I did start of with 12x12 albums but soon changed to the smaller 81/2 x 11 size then A4. I had all number of different albums scattered where ever they would fit, in lots of different themes.

See all those years ago I decided that having separate albums for each family member and then separating them even more to have albums for sport, school, birthdays, Christmas etc. Getting a headache yet? It was only this year over 15 years since I started scrapbooking that I decided this wasn't working for me.
So what do you do when you don't like something, you change it right? I went about pulling every single layout I had ever done out of their current albums.

I could never of realised that something I thought so simple would be such a huge job. It took me a whole day just to do that, then came the sorting. All layouts were then sorted into years and then months, and if I thought taking the layouts out of albums was a huge job, then this next step was like climbing Mt Everest.
It took many days to get all layouts sorted and to be able to use my kitchen table again. By this stage I was a bit over it and thought why did I ever decide to do this.
I kept at it though, which pleased the family, there wasn't layouts laying around on every surface. Eventually I had all layouts in new albums sorted by year and months. I'm going to suggest to you all that you ALWAYS date your layouts with month and year, I didn't always do this which made the sorting really hard. Luckily I have a good memory and photos sorted on my PC!!

After many weeks I was done and all my layouts were now chronological, each year having its own album (or two in some cases) and I even had spare albums.
It then took a few more weeks before each of the albums got their own little tag saying which year it was. Now that its all done and I look back at all the work it took I'm glad I went to the effort.

How do you store your layouts, do you theme them or go chronological like I've done?


Thanks for visiting
Lis :)