One of my favorite things to do is to sit on the floor at my parents’ house and flip through old boxes of loose family photos that we’ve collected over the years. My mom sorted them by year, and I love starting with the earliest photos of our family and moving through the years.
I worry sometimes that these printed photos are becoming a lost art. I had hundreds of photos on my computer from my college years that I never printed, and I lost most of them when my computer crashed my senior year. How many of us are taking hundreds or thousands of photos on our phones each year only to lose them when we forget to back them up? How often do you take the time to go through all of your phone photos to pick out your favorites and print them out?
A few years ago, I decided that I would give Jeff the same gift for Christmas every year—a memory box with my favorite photos from the year. It’s such a fun gift to put together. I get to spend hours reflecting on memories from the year and picking out my favorite photos. Some are professional photos that we’ve had taken. Some are photos that we took using my professional gear. Others are shots that we snapped on our cell phones while we were out and about. I pick out about 200 of my favorites for the box and get them printed as loose 5×7 prints. We have a shelf in our living room where we’re collecting the boxes in chronological order (we’re up to three boxes at this point—one for each year of our marriage).
If you haven’t made a point to go through your photos in a while, I absolutely encourage you to make a tradition of printing them out in some form to enjoy, even if you only choose a few to swap out in frames around your home. If you’re interested in creating your own memory box tradition, get in touch to learn more about printing your photos from the year to keep in a custom box with your favorite photo on the front. Boxes can be as small as 50 prints or as large as 500. I love all things sentimental, and I see it as an important investment in my family’s most cherished memories.
