A Scrapbooking Mom Dealing With Frustration

I wasn’t always dealing with frustration when it came to scrapbooking. It was a gradual process. I actually enjoyed it very much in the beginning. It was a great time to get together with other moms and ooh and aah over the pictures of our kids. It wasn’t until later that the frustrations of scrapbooking would begin.

Scrapping started out as a great storage solution for my photos. With my first born just months old, this was an awesome way that I could not only have a place to put them, but I could journal those precious first moments of his life. I was hooked! Then one corner rounder turned into another. One pack of paper turned into every color and patterned paper that was available. One black pen turned into a rainbow of not only colors but also tip sizes. Before long, I had enough supplies to start a scrapbook store. (My husband would say a scrapbook warehouse! LOL)

It seemed that every new product that came out I just had to have. I would justify it because I am the family historian, the one that would save our heritage for future generations. These pictures needed those adorable stickers and fancy embellishments.

A few years later, we were blessed with another child, and then another which meant more pictures. Scrapbooking soon became very overwhelming to the point that it wasn’t enjoyable any more. It was more of something that I had to do because after all, my first-born had a beautiful handmade scrapbook. It seemed there wasn’t enough time in the day and not enough sleep at night to justify bringing all my scrapbook organizers out.

Not to mention my husband was also dealing with frustration because I took over his workbench as my scrapbook desk loaded with piles and piles of scrabooking supplies. I know he would much rather work on his car in the garage than look at my scrapbooking stuff.

1. It takes too much time
2. There are too many tools to purchase
3. Supplies take up too much closet space
4. Tired of organizing the closet and re-organizing the supplies
5. Feel like you will never get caught up
6. Worried your pages won’t be the perfect scrapbook page layout
7. Printing and sorting pictures is too time consuming
8. Tired of the same old layouts
9. Cost too much
10. Too much work and time to unpack and pack up your supplies

Do any of these issues hit home for you? These are all problems that I faced when I was in the midst of scrapbooking. I loved the idea behind it, but couldn’t keep up with the amount of pictures that I was taking. I became so frustrated with it all that I just gave it up. In fact, I started to not take very many pictures because I new they would just end up in my huge "archival quality" photo storage box. (I guess the company knew I wasn’t going to have time to put my pictures in albums and the box needed to be achival quality.)

Two years went by and two more children were born. I was a home schooling mom of five now and I was hardly taking any pictures at all. Then, I found my solution. Or my solution found me I should say. I found a way to reduce the mess and stress of this great hobby while saving money at the same time. Making the big switch to digital scrapbooking is how I was overcoming this frustration and getting caught up with my albums. I even started taking pictures again.

My best mom advice to you is to keep it simple! Go Digital! You won’t have to deal with the frustrations or deal with burnout of scrapbooking again! There are better things to do with your pictures than cutting and gluing them on a page.

P.S. When I started scrapbooking, I said that digital could never replace the hands on, hand written stories that gave my books that personal touch. Oh….I was wrong!