Scrapbooking needs to happen more often than once every seven years, especially if you’re the unofficial family photographer and/or a documentation junkie.

Sheesh.

I’m not even getting fancy — I’m just putting photos away and writing in names and some simple captions. I fancy myself the link in my family between “tossing unlabeled photos in a drawer” and “Scrapbooking with a capital S.” My parents used the sticky albums with the static cover sheets; I’ve got sheet-protected pages and acid-free supplies.

But I am THISCLOSE to setting up collage sheets on snapfish and calling it a day. I have a feeling that will be the trend for 2009…because I’ll keep taking a metric ton of pictures, but time is money, yo. If I’m not going to do anything more than organize pics on a page, I’m happy to pay someone to do that for me.

And I have a genetic predisposition against chucking anything printed on Kodak paper. It has taken me years to be able to toss out photos of people and places I have no intention of remembering fondly or explaining to my progeny. I’m getting so much better at that… Why showcase memories you might think you should move past?

Because sometimes those memories are precious and you don’t want to move past them for a reason. You may even retrieve the old photos someday…you may frame them and put them back in a place of honor, where they should always have been.

The rest, though? They’re just reminders of missteps, mistakes, and missed opportunities. They weigh heavily enough without being part of a family album.