Being "Caught Up"

I wrote this post as a member of the Design Team at Flamingo Scraps and wanted to share it here.

I've heard many scrapbookers complain that they will never be caught up with their scrapping. Some agonize about their huge scrapping to-do list the way other people fret about their personal or work to-do lists. I don't get that. Scrapping is a hobby, not an obligation, yet to hear some people you'd think that it was a horribly unpleasant chore!

Personally, it doesn't bother me that much if I'm not caught up. As long as I can remember the reasons why the photo is important to me, then I'm happy. It helps that I journal daily. There have been many times that I've had to check the journal to help me tell the story exactly the way I wanted it to be told.

On average, I scrap 2-6 months behind. I typically order photos about six times a year, so I have around two months' worth of topics available to me when my photos show up. From those, I pick and choose as the mood strikes me. It's not uncommon for me to scrap events completely out of order, or even scrap parts of an occasion and not get to the rest until months later. I usually have at least 5 layouts (often more) partially done, and there's no rhyme or reason to when they are finished. I put everything in the albums chronologically, but I definitely don't scrap that way!

Here's a layout I finished on March 26. Coincidentally, the latest photo on it is from October 26, five months ago.

I'm going to have to rearrange the layouts in my album a bit, because I've already scrapped everything from November and I didn't guess correctly about how many October layouts I would make. I suppose if I were truly caught up, I wouldn't have this problem. Oh well!

I should mention that when I say I scrap 2-6 months behind on average, I am not including the literally thousands of unscrapped photos from my childhood, photos I inherited from my grandma, or photos from the years 2002 and 2003 during which I was busy dating my now-husband instead of scrapping. Yes, they're on my long-term to-do list, but I don't let them worry me.