Who wants them?

The rare occasion the room is clean

I think everyone who knows me knows I scrapbook. I scrapbook a lot. Like weekly. Scrapping is my creative outlook and being in the scrapbook room resets my brain somehow and I feel like I’m ready for work again.

By scrapping every weekend, you end up with a lot of scrapbooks. That coupled with being a scrapper since 1998, you get a lot of scrapbooks. Scrapbooking started as a way to share your family stories with the future. Your kids. Your grandkids etc. The Mormons started it as a way of storytelling and ancestry.

I use scrapbooking to tell my stories. My everyday life. The cats. Trips. The past. Everything.  It’s a way to document memories, special moments, and milestones in a creative and personalized way. The result is a wonderful collection of memories displayed on beautiful pages that tell stories.

One question in the scrapbook community that has been passing through social media is “what happens to these scrapbooks after you’re gone?” “Who gets them?” Will they be saved? Or discarded?

As you can imagine, there are a dozen and one opinion about this. Scrapbooking is very personal, and the reason people do it is very personal. What’s normally a friendly community is really getting all up in arms over what some people (like me) think about this.

In the world of scrappers who have kids, their plan is that these beautiful books get passed down. Because they hold a great deal of sentimental value it’s thought that the remaining family will want to cherish them. And they very well may. This, I would say, is what the majority of scrappers assume will happen with their scrapbooks. Hell, I used to believe this.

The truth is it’s very likely that the Niece or anyone who’s left after I go are not going to want my scrapbooks. There are a lot of them. And here’s the reality I had to get to, that’s ok.

Turns out, I scrapbook for me. I assume 100% that they will be tossed (maybe donated?) when I’m gone. And I’m ok with that. I scrap for my enjoyment and peace of mind now. The present. This, as you can imagine, is not a popular thought among die-hard scrappers. I’ve gotten some not so nice comments and some trying to talk me into changing my mind about what will happen to my books. The thing is, I’ll be gone. I have ZERO control over what happens to them. Would I be sad if they got tossed? Nope. I’m dead. Would I prefer someone to enjoy them and, at least for a moment, look through them and marvel at the life I had? Yes, absolutely yes. If I’m being honest, I’d actually like them to look through them and say, “My god she was a talented scrapper.” But most likely they’ll say, “My god she spent a lot of $$ on scrapbooking.”

Regardless of what happens with them, or what we want to happen to them, we won’t be here. Which is why I enjoy them now. I enjoy the process (gosh I’m shocked I enjoy a process) of scrapping. I love touching all the doo dads and finding a perfect spot for them on a page. I love to look back through my albums and do the “Remember when…” conversation. I love when friends and family look through them and learn something new about me or something I wrote. To be cliché, it completes me. It makes me a better person because I get to be creative and get my brain to reset every week.