Scrapbook In Progress

It’s a sickness.  Scrapbooking.  I’m not talking about creating scrapbooks as an art form where each page is a thing of beauty and makes just the right statement.  No, I’m talking about the saved ticket stubs and menus and party hats and every photograph you ever took slapped willy-nilly into a big, oversized, ever-expandable-till-it-falls-apart scrapbook.  It’s a problem and it’s one I’ve lived with ever since I can remember.

I think there are well over a hundred scrapbooks in my ‘collection’ now.  The earliest one dates back to my elementary school days and is mostly filled with Valentines and Birthday Cards.  I didn’t really get the Save Everything Virus until I was into my twenties and, since then, it has taken on epidemic proportions.

Records of the Past

In addition to the Everyday Scrapbooks, I’m continually working on the ones I think of as Historic Scrapbooks – books in which I place the photographs and information concerning family, house, other structures of Oysterville, and so on.  I am always behind in my gathering and sorting and labeling and pasting.  There aren’t enough hours in the day.

In fact, there are entire years during which I saved all the bits and pieces but never had time to start a scrapbook.  Boxes full of ‘stuff’ are out in our Back Forty (read storage room) waiting.  Just waiting.  By now I’ve no doubt forgotten the significance of all those concert programs and photographs of visitors and boarding passes.

Filled Shelves

But, do I throw them away?  Of course not.  It’s part of that Saving Gene that I inherited from the Espy and Richardson sides of the family.  And so, in the odd moments (read hours, days, weeks) when nothing else is pressing, I’m at the dining room table trying to get caught up.  If I were as organized as my friend Gordon (who also has this sickness), I’d work on the scrapbooks a little every day.  But then when would I blog?  Or write my next column?  Or work on the revision of my Willard book?  Or start the next writing project?  Or…

Besides that, I’m running out of storage room.  Two of the upstairs bedroom closets have been fitted out with ‘scrapbook shelves.’  The shelves in the Back Forty are maxed, as is my office.  And, right now, we can’t have anyone to dinner until I clean up my work space in the dining room…