Organising Scrapbook Albums

LSBS asked the question this morning - how do you organise your layouts/albums? My answer was quite long, so I'm putting here too.

I'm quite organised in this sense.

I put the photos into album sleeves in chronological order when I get them printed. Then I flick through the albums to see which photos leap out at me that day and 'want' to get scrapped.

When I first started I would scrap them all in order, but found that didn't quite suit me. I also have a time limit on photos. If they've been sitting in albums for over 2 years, then I'm just not going to get inspired to do them! Then they get either:
- left there with just the story and no layout (if the photo or story is important)
- taken out and given to grandparents.


I have 6 albums on the go at once - one for each boy (these consist of about 3 actual albums each that have photos still unscrapped, as i've found that albums don't cope with more than 20 sleeves each before they fall apart!), one for random family moments, one for historical family stuff and one for house/renovation projects (this one is currently finished as we sold our house 2 years ago, but we're about to buy a new one so it'll get resurected - it's basically before and after photos of each room).

Oh, plus I have "benchmark" albums for each of the boys. These have the best photo of them for each age, 1 day, 1 week, 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 1 year, 2 years, etc plus the annual family xmas photo. My idea was to end up with an album for each boy for a 21st present or something! These layouts get extra thought and more expensive embellies than the others too.


All of this adds up to 4 shelves of albums in our house, and each one, when full gets a label created and hung off the back of them.