How I journal right now

Hello and a happy September!

Hope you had a nice summer.

The kids (and I) are back in school. After a summer of making memories, I’m trying to catch up on recording some of the fun stuff we did. While I’m at it, I thought I’d share how I’m keeping our family memories this year since I didn’t have a chance to do it earlier in the year.

As always, my two main ways of keeping memories are journals and sketchbooks. I have tweaked them a little throughout the year, but that’s okay. My goal is always to keep things as simple as possible. I tweak and try out new things all the time, but they need to be pretty simple for me to stick to them.

Journals:  

I have kept journals since I was 9 or 10 years old and journal almost daily. My journaling style changes from day to day; it’s sometimes wordy, sometimes visual, or a mixture of both, depending on what journal I’m writing in, the amount of time I have, and what mood I’m in. I like it. It keeps them interesting and fresh.

I don’t keep many types of journals, because I like it when things are kept together chronologically. That way I always get a good overview of how things work together.

I went back to my trusted Moleskines this year after using  travelers notebooks for a couple of years. I love that they lay flat and have enough pages to see me through a year. Some people don’t like them since they don’t have the best quality paper, but they suit me down to the ground. I don’t use fountain pens so I don’t have to be too worried about the quality, and frankly, it stops me from being too precious about them.

The journals I keep in 2019 are:

My daily journal: This is my go to everyday journal where I write down thoughts, feelings and ideas, document things as they happen and glue in photos, ticket stubs, etc as I go. It changes with me and what’s going on in my life.

Kids’ life journals: These journals are very special to me. They follow my kids’ lives from when I was pregnant with them until now. I plan to give them to the kids when they are older. I don’t write in them as often as my own one, but they mean a lot to me. I’ll have a post up on them next week, because I think you will like them too.

Notebooks: These days, I also consider my general notebooks part of my journaling/ memory-keeping arsenal, because they are such a great record of what’s going on in my my mind at any point; what matters to me, what I’m reading, what I’m learning, what I’m hoping and dreaming, what I’m planning. They are overflowing with study notes, dreams, sketches and ideas. I used to throw them out when I thought I was done with them, but I have been keeping them for the past few years and absolutely love them.

Sketchbooks:

I keep a couple of different sketchbooks too. 

Sketching childhood: This is my favourite sketchbook. When i gathered everything i wanted in the children’s life journals, I decided to update the kids’ sketchbooks as well. I didn’t like the paper in the old sketchbooks so I never used them. I also decided to combine them and keep one sketchbook for them both, rather than two. So much of their lives overlap and I didn’t want to have to draw everything twice, or choose one child’s sketchbook over the other. I like it. It was a good decision.

Ordinary times: This is like an extension of the journals and notebooks- it’s filled with anything and everything that takes my fancy in the moment; everyday moments, people or things that interest me, buildings or monuments I like, and so on.

Memory boxes:

On top of that, we all all have memory boxes. My kids are old enough now to be in charge of their own ones, but they know they have limited space, so they can’t keep everything. Sometimes they have to make tough decisions.

What’s your favourite way of keeping memories this year? What would you like to do next?