It's a Love/Hate Thing...

When I did my major spring cleaning, I realized that my scrapbooking cabinet needed a major overhaul. Remember this?

I haven't touched this stuff since last August when I finally finished our wedding album and began a new album containing special occasions from our first few years of marriage. Yes -- it took me 2 years to complete our wedding album. Don't judge me, just love me.

Today I finally decided to tackle it because I was avoiding working on my thesis proposal love to work hard everyday. There's nothing like procrastinating by doing something productive, now is there? All in all, the overhaul went well. Here is the after:

(Sorry the pictures aren't great. It is a very narrow room and one door of the cabinet closes unless you are holding it open so I was limited with the angles I could get).

BUT - this post is not really about the before and after of the cabinet. This post is about scrapbooking itself. As I was going through and organizing all of my supplies, I realized that I have a love/hate relationship with scrapping.

I love my scrapbooks and I would never trade them for anything. I love sitting down with them every once in a while and reliving the memories that are contained within them. BUT - I stinkin' hate the scrapping process.

Once I get going, I really love scrapping. The problem is that there is no place for me to work in our current home. I have the cabinet for my supplies, which is awesome, but when I want to work on it, I have to use the dining room table. I can't really leave stuff out for an extended period of time. The getting out and putting away is the worst part so I often avoid it. It never seems to be worth the task if I can only work for a few hours here and there. I wait until I have a whole weekend to dedicate to scrapping to get it out and as you can well imagine, those weekends are few and far between.

I am so far behind I don't even know where to start. I have finished our wedding album and started a few pages documenting the first bit of our marriage. Basically, I have finished up until November 2006 (3 months after the wedding). I'm sure you will believe me when I say a LOT has happened since then. Let's see... a niece, a flood, a move, three Christmases, two thanksgivings, a new dog, a honeymoon, three camping trips, a graduation, a garden and a new nephew to name a few. How am I possibly going to get all of those pages done and still manage to tackle the task of scrapbooking my trip to Scotland before I forget what that country was called?

I considered just starting fresh and going ahead with the album for the trip but I don't want to just forget about all the stuff that's happened in our first three years of marriage. Besides, I have about 8 pages done between the wedding and now so I don't want to just let those go to waste. I just wish I could put life on hold, get caught up on the scrapbooks and then continue with life.

Last Christmas I got a Christmas album kit. I find most album kits to be kind of lame but this one is actually very nice. The album is pretty and so are the coordinating papers, stickers and accents. I have considered making one page to represent each Christmas we spend together and keep adding to the book as the years go on. So far, I'm 0 for 3. If I'm going to do this, I better get moving.

So, all you scrappers out there, can you help? Please tell me, how do you do it? How do you decide what is scrap worthy? How do you keep up? How do you organize your stuff? What do you do with the photos you print but don't end up making it into your album? What do you do with the scrap pieces of paper that you don't use? I am about to give up!