How to Preserve Family Memories

How to preserve family memories in a digital world is a question many of us have. Let’s learn some intentional ways to do so.

Recently, I shared about creating boundaries on social media and how I did not want social media to be the host of all of my memories. In sharing this, many others said they had been thinking the same thing. However, the question then is, what do we do with the photos we take? Do we let them live in our phones or do we put them somewhere else?

As I thought through this, I wanted to share some intentional ideas for you to use. You do not need to do all of these to preserve family memories. Pick out one that seems the most doable to you and start there.

How to Preserve Family Memories

Create a family yearbook.

This is something I started doing a couple of years ago. The kids love going through the family yearbooks. I use Shutterfly to print the book. There are often deals that you can use to get a free book or free extra pages.

The idea is that the book contains the photos from that entire year. With this, you will want to set yourself a deadline. It can be a good idea to have the book as a Christmas gift for the family. Then the following year, will start with Christmas of the previous year.

Have a gallery wall of photos in your home.

One idea that I have seen Erin with Simple Purposeful Living do, is to have a gallery wall of monthly photos in your home.

For this, you would have 12 frames hanging on the wall. To start off, you can put 12 different photos from the previous year in the frames. The concept is that each frame represents a month, so you pick a picture from that month to print and put in the frame.

Moving forward, at the end of every month, you will print off one photo and put it in that frame.

When she takes out the old photo, she puts it in a simple photo book. This is such a fun way to have current photos up as memories.

Use a family memory jar.

This idea does not include photos but it does still cover preserving memories. The idea is that you have a jar that you fill with memories written on pieces of paper. At the end of the year, you open the jar and read through the memories. Learn more about the memory jar.

Create a baby book for your kids.

Instead of feeling like you need to document your child’s entire year, consider creating a baby book and then have the family yearbooks for the rest of the photos.

Even if your child is older, you can do this now! It would be a great gift. You can use Shutterfly or another similar service to create these.

These years with our kids are so special and fleeting. With these intentional ideas, you can preserve family memories in spaces where you can look at them as you want.

Want to hear other ideas? Check out these tips.