We collect thing everywhere we go.  A lot of us don’t hang on to all of that stuff– many a grade-school concert program ends up in the trash can on the way out of the auditorium.  But why not scrapbook it, along with the “I completed 5th grade band” certificate and a picture of Timmy struggling to balance the tuba on his lap?

It can be hard to think of these everyday items as being something worth keeping, especially now that we’re all so conscious of clutter.  If it helps, think of it as ecological preservation by crafting.  Ecological because if it’s in your scrapbook, it’s not in a landfill.  Preservation because now you’ve saved just a little bit more of a moment in time.

Here is look at one of the pages from the vacation scrapbook I made after my husband and I went to the Czech Republic.  At the top you can see a picture my husband took of colorful downtown Pilsen, surrounded by the ’scraps’ I kept from that portion of our trip, including a ticket to the brewery, a coaster from the local pub, our unused beer tokens (and the accompanying explanation of what a beer token is), and even the hotel’s map of the city — which I attached to the page in such a way that it can be unfolded and used if we should ever need it.  The rest of the scrapbook features train, bus, and subway tickets, bits and pieces that I cut out of other maps of the area, museum passes and yes, some pictures of us, too. 

Everywhere we went, we acquired another bit of paper and I just kept tucking it into my backpack, certain that I’d do something with it all…. eventually.  This passive kind of collection is how we normally acquire the scrapbook fodder I’ve been talking about.  But there are more active ways of gathering, which I will start to touch on in the next installment.