Albums are most often organized chronologically because they tell a coherent story this way. First this happened and then that happened. The story makes more sense when it is based in time. Chronological organization is easy to think. The decision about where a story goes, is already made.

Another outcome of chronologically-organized scrapbooks is that through turning the pages, the reader can learn how a the scrapbooker (or family) has progressed (most history after all, is written as the story of progress).

I wonder if the appeal of non-chronological scrapbooking comes from the fact that most of us experience very little change from year to year. Even the changes that do happen, while seemingly big at the time, are often quite small in the grand scheme of things. Just a thought. What do you think?

Read More:

• I Scrapbook Chronologically.
• How is Time Measured?
• The First Year
• Child-Prompted Scrapbooking
• Time Order on Layouts
• Inspiration Rather than Time

There is a thought community within the scrapbooking community that emphasizes themes and inspiration rather than time as the basis of organization. Big Picture Scrapbooking is an online education program (Julian and Rehn 2009) devoted to “giving permission” to people to scrapbook non-chronologically. This philosophy posits that scrapbookers should sort their photographs into meaningful categories[1] and scrapbook what inspires them when they are scrapbooking without regard to the passing of time. This philosophy is a result of what happens when scrapbookers focus solely on chronological scrapbooking: they inevitably fall behind and are constantly trying to get caught up. Big Picture Scrapbooking encourages scrapbookers to organize their photographs around a few simple categories and then scrapbook what inspires them.

One of my respondents mentions how she was trying to follow this philosophy “because sometimes when you see this photograph next to another photograph, it brings to your mind some connection that you previously would never have made.”

The existence of this thought community within scrapbooking indicates there are competing ways to perceive the past. Most scrapbookers start out as chronological scrapbookers even when they are scrapbooking thematically and rarely scrapbook purely based on inspiration.

As I’ve mentioned previously, just because an album may be organized chronologically does not mean it was scrapbooked chronologically. It is far more common for a person to scrapbook whatever they want and then organize the pages chronologically for the album. Layouts are almost always organized chronologically.

Photographs on the layouts, however, are not necessarily organized chronologically, but some respondents took care to make sure that they are. The photographs on a layout are typically from one event or short period of time (e.g., usually a day or a week, occasionally a month, rarely a year). Occasionally, a layout may contain photographs across different years. For example, one respondent does this with some older photographs of herself across several years that she did not really know what else to do with. She organizes them chronologically on one page and focuses on the outfits producing a fashion timeline.

In other words, it is the rare scrapbooker who organizes photographs on a layout in a time-order fashion. As I am writing this post, however, I am struck by the time order of many Project Life adherents. For scrapbookers using weekly two-page Project Life spreads their photographs are often organized in time order, too.  Interesting.

Another wrinkle in this finding is that with the rise of digital photography, it is super easy to find out the time order of photographs so that they can be organized chronologically on a layout. A person could look up the data from the photo or the photo may even be timestamped. It just was not possible to get this level of time order precision in the film era.

What about you? Do you ever organize photographs on a single layout based on time? Why or why not? 

Read More:

• I Scrapbook Chronologically.
• How is Time Measured?
• The First Year
• Child-Prompted Scrapbooking

Last week, I talked about scrapbooking first years. First years are intriguing because the moment when a first year begins varies. For example, albums about a child’s first year typically begin either with a sonogram photograph or photographs when the child is born. If the album begins with a sonograph photo (or a positive pregnency test) and then continues until the child’s first birthday, is it still a first year album?

Some scrapbookers create separate albums chronicling the pregnancy separate from the child’s first year suggesting that the pregnancy is not about the child as much as it is about the mother.

For other scrapbookers, the birth of a child is what prompts them to take up scrapbooking. The child comes to symbolize the beginning of the family even though the scrapbooker was more than likely part of a family before the child came into existence. It is as if the family did not exist before the scrapbook put the family into existence.

Other scrapbookers made the decision to scrapbook before having children because of their own lack of knowledge about their own parent’s lives before children. Children sometimes wonder what their parents were like before they had children. Because few people document their lives prior to having children, it is difficult for children to understand what their parents were like before they were parents. Parents have always been parents without any evidence to the contrary. Without a scrapbook documenting life before children, it is as if a person had no life before their children were born.

If you have children, did you begin scrapbooking before or after you had children? Why? Did you scrapbook a pregnancy separate from the child? When do first years begin and end? 

Read More:

• I Scrapbook Chronologically.
• How is Time Measured?
• The First Year