Friends! You’ve accompanied me on my two-year journey of photo organization with such patience and good cheer. Your encouragement along the way, especially in the trenches of iPhone photo organization, kept me going. With thanks, I’ve finally put together the steps I took over the last few years to get my photo house in order – and today I’m sharing the first installment!
Sometimes I’ve felt a little awkward talking about this project so much – after all, it’s not like I’m solving nuclear physics over here. But the overwhelm created by having an amazing camera ever-present with no physical storage constraints, a houseful of cute kiddos, and the desire for simplicity is real.
Before I began this project, I also had no back-up solution (meaning I lived with a constant low-grade fear of losing all of my precious photos) and no good way to enjoy our favorite images. What I did have was the nagging feeling that for every photo gem captured on my camera roll, there was a surrounding sea of 18 almost-identical-but-not-quite-as-sparkling versions.
And so, slowly but surely, I waded into the mess step-by-step. Starting with this post, I’m so happy to lay out those steps for you. They’re not rocket science, but I hope they’ll make the path a little clearer and easier for you if you’re hoping to follow along behind.
Two shout-outs before we begin:
— I purchased Nancy’s photo organization digital guide a few years ago, and it was just the kick in the pants I needed to get this project underway! I diverged from her process at different points and made it my own, but I’d definitely recommend her course if you’re looking for an even more comprehensive guide than I’ll be sharing here. Note: I purchased the $29 option, which is no longer available, but you can see current options here!
— This was a long and tedious project, and without the process of breaking it down and the accountability of mini goals to check off month after month, I’m not sure I ever would have gotten to where I am now. Couldn’t have done it without you, PowerSheets! :) All of the steps below are perfect to add to your Tending List!
Let’s start with physical photo organization!
Step 1 | Gather all printed photos. First, I gathered every loose printed photo in our home and brought them together in one spot. I gathered the printed photos that were still at my parents’ home and brought them to NC. I also had several old photo albums, and except in one instance, I disassembled them and added the loose photos to the growing pile.
Step 2 | Sort printed photos into loose categories. My categories were childhood, middle school, high school, college, newlyweds, and family life. In process, this looked like big piles of photos arranged in a circle around me on the floor of our loft, ha! Nothing fancy. Though much of our history is already combined, I did not separate out my childhood photos from John’s – they’re all in one pile!
Step 3 | Cull printed photos. With the photos in loose categories, it was easier to sort through each one. I touched every photo and discarded duplicates, photos with bad lighting, and photos with events or people I no longer really cared about (harsh but true, ha!). I know this can be hard for some, and I have a few more tips for sorting through childhood itemshere. My best tip is to take the long view – will you really care about that photo in 20 years? – and to challenge yourself to keep the photos that truly bring joy and tell your story, not the ones you “think you should keep.”
Step 4 | Sort printed photos into a box or boxes. I only have a few hundred printed photos, and they all fit in one photo box at this point. They’re divided into categories by little homemade dividers – again, nothing fancy :) If you have lots of printed photos, multiple boxes might be helpful!
Step 5 | Refresh photos around home. Flipping through all of our printed photos helped me rediscover a few gems. I purchased a few new frames and added photos to our bedrooms, mantel, refrigerator, and living room gallery wall, among other spots. In some cases, these were heavy-hitters – wedding and newborn photos – but in others, they were teeny little moments, like June on the boat with her aunt or John and June laughing at our favorite pizza place.
That’s it! We’ll talk about printed photo albums in part three of this series, but in the meantime, you might find this post that touches on printed Instagram photos interesting.
I’d love to hear: do you have printed photos in your home? Are they organized? If so, how? Back with more soon! :)
In our yearlong process of discerning whether children were in our future, John and I asked a handful of people some variation of “why did you decide to have children?” or “why do you want to have children?” It was spectacular conversation fodder, and resulted in many memorable discussions with people we love.
One conversation in particular has stuck with me for years. It was with one of the people I’m closest to, and it surprised me.
John and I were tucked into a booth next to each other while out to dinner, sitting across from my Dad. This was in his season of being dislocated from my Mom for his job – he was living in Northern Virginia, and made the trip down to see us once a month. The three of us had many adventures on those weekends – swimming in the Eno, poking around at the farmer’s market, taking long drives to our favorite hiking trails.
On that evening, I remember trying to work The Question into the conversation casually, so as not to betray the turmoil lurking just beneath the surface. If there was one person I trusted to weigh in on this decision, it would be him, and I was more than curious to hear what he’d say.
My Dad is someone who has always delighted in his children. Next to his pun-filled humor, his diplomacy skills, his excellent grammar, his love for reading and history and golf — he is known for his love for his daughters. It is his calling card. “No one loves his daughters as much as Rob Ayer,” a friend’s Mom commented to me once when I was telling her about one of our weekend visits. (What a glow, as a daughter, to be loved so well and so visibly! To be delighted in!)
So what would he say? His answer was simple and, to me, unexpected: “I wanted to raise people I’d like to be around.” Not just people he would love – that was easy – but people he would like.
Though this wasn’t the answer I was expecting, it immediately made sense to me. My Dad is one of six kids who grew up on a dairy farm in a small town. My understanding of his family in childhood is that it was largely an insular unit, a self-contained ecosystem of playmates and chore helpers and book swappers and make believe compadres. If you didn’t like being around your family, life would be pretty awful — because you were going to spend a LOT of time with your family.
Even those of us raised in less-remote settings can appreciate how many hundreds of thousands of hours we log with our immediate family, and therefore, how important it becomes to our overall happiness whether we enjoy that time or not. I can see now that raising his kids to be people he enjoyed being around, of building a family unit of likable people who liked each other, was a guiding principle behind many of his decisions.
Good grades? Not the goal. Intellectual curiosity, a love of reading, and the ability to discuss ideas? That’s a person he would like to spend time with.
Starting varsity player? Not the goal. An appreciation for healthy bodies, sportsmanlike conduct, and a day spent outside? That’s a person he would like to spend time with.
Also the goal: all the things any of us find likable in people, our kids or not – kindness, attentive listening, respect for others, graciousness, a willingness to be a helper.
As a parent, what a release of pressure this must have been! He didn’t want kids to burnish his own self-image. He didn’t want to raise kids to change the world or get great grades or to play a sport he loved. He wanted to raise kids he liked spending time with – when they were young, and now, when they are older. It worked: in my whole life, there has never been a season when I didn’t love spending time with my Dad.
Though this whole parenting paradigm feels selfish in a way – after all, you’re using your standard and preferences as the navigational guide – a kid you like will inevitably be a kid (and adult) other people like, too. And to be clear, this was not about making carbon copies of himself – we can enjoy being around people who are quite different from us! The world will give us a lot of messages about what kinds of kids we should strive to raise, and I’ve found most of them to be pretty empty. But raising kids I enjoy spending time with? I can aim for that.
As an introvert, the idea of a close-knit, built-in community that genuinely loves spending together was immediately appealing to me. In the years since, I’ve found it to be a helpful decision filter, just as I imagine my Dad has. It’s not the only one, of course, but it is helpful – even on a micro level. If there’s something our kids do that really annoys us (like, uh, shrieking for no reason…), we’re going to try to work with them to change it (unless there’s a strong reason not to!). After all, I’m allowed to enjoy this parenting thing, too :)
And enjoy it I do. There are few things I love more than spending a day with June, doing anything or nothing at all. She is the best little buddy – one of my most favorite companions – and a delight to be around. I love her, I like her, and I’m anticipating with joy what our time together might be like as she grows older.
John feels the same way. He is well on his way to being known for his love for his kids (and wife, I hope!!) – just one of the things that makes him an amazing dad. Happy Father’s Day to him, to my Dad and father-in-law, and to all the great dads out there. xo
P.S. I’d never heard this idea ruminated on until last year. I could have written this essay, and loved reading it!
P.P.S. Shep is a great little buddy, too, and I can’t wait for our future adventures as he grows – it’s just a little easier to develop a friendship with someone who can talk :)
Hello, friends. Like you, I’ve spent the past week in incessant conversation with those around me about what is happening right now. About George Floyd. About Christian Cooper. About the protests and the riots. About you, reading, who might not be white. I have been praying, listening, thinking, reading, and talking to those closest to me. I have been asking (sometimes hourly) for a fresh heart: one that is willing to sit with the pain of others, to turn away from feeling offended, to quiet my own needs, to be humbled (again and then again).
In all this, I am severely imperfect, and this is not about me – but this is a space I am responsible for. I believe in words, but I believe more in actions. That’s what these posts are – a chance to share the actions I’m taking each month to move forward on the things that matter to me (always imperfectly, always incompletely), and an offer to you to do the same. Whether you feel timid or confused or are just in deep pain right now, here’s something I know: cultivating what matters in our hearts, in our families, in our world always starts with one step. And it continues with another. Here are a few of the steps I’m taking in June.
On my calendar this month: — Blueberry picking, hopefully many times over — Filming June in June Volume 5… the hunt for the perfect song is on! — Father’s Day
What I’m loving right now: — In light of Father’s Day, might I recommend a pair of these shorts for your favorite dad? John (who never buys clothes) just went hog wild and bought two pairs, and he is in love. He has the “One Short.” — I appreciate so much the way David Brooks consistently and movingly writes about morality. His most recent essay struck me, especially this line: “He would have stored in his upbringing the understanding that hard times are the making of character, a revelation of character and a test of character.” — I planned to feature a few books featuring diverse characters in this section, as adding to our library was one of the first tangible actions I took this weekend, but there ended up being too many to list – so I moved them to their own dedicated post tomorrow! In the meantime, this one and this one are two of our favorites.
What I read in May: — The Invention of Wings | WOW this was so good. I hadn’t read anything by Sue Monk Kidd since The Secret Lives of Bees over a decade ago, and I forgot how elegant of a writer she is. This book is set over several decades in the 1800’s and follows two entwined stories loosely based on real figures: a white girl who grows up to be a Quaker Abolitionist, and the black girl she is given ownership of on her 11th birthday. I think fiction is one of the most beautiful and effective ways to grow empathy for people who are different than us, and on that basis alone I would highly recommend this one. — Unshakeable | This is a memoir written by Cultivate’s summer intern (!). Besides the fact that it’s wildly impressive for a college student to have self-published a book, I appreciated how she handled her rough transition to college, given my own. It was also another eyeopening and frightening look at how insidious anxiety can be for so many people today. — The Secrets of Happy Families | I gave this book an enthusiastic thumbs up on Instagram when I was a few chapters in, and though I still very much recommend it, the first section turned out to be my favorite. The later chapters felt a little more surface to me, and not quite as original. I fully admit this could be because some of the topics in the first section, like family mission statements and behavior charts, are things I’m actively mulling over right now :)
I’m still chugging along with my 2020 reading list as best I can, despite not having library access! I did just purchase Just Mercy, my February pick, because I was on an endless wait list even before the library closed and I’m eager to dive in.
Revisiting my May goals: Clean out the garage (Some progress made! We got rid of a big desk taking up space.) Digitize loose photos from 2005-2009 Design and print our first family photo album(Yes!!) Finish reading Matthew with John and begin Mark Complete gifts for Mother’s Day with June + Shep(Yes! We made thumbprint laminated bookmarks – so cute!) Send watercolor hugs Go camping in our backyard(So fun! See a peek here.) Complete friend dossiers Experiment with a custom Publix shopping list(Done and it has been a major success!) Make a list of all our non-recipe meals for binder(Done! More on my recipe binder.)
June goals: — Add more diverse faces to our family library — Finish reading Matthew with John — Set up a simple email newsletter for EFM. Lisa kindly sent over some instructions, and I’m happy to make this happen for those who have asked over the years! It will just be a simple email every time there’s a new post – nothing fancy :) — Write some entries in our COVID-19 family journal. Cultivate has some great prompts I plan to use to make this easy! — Photocopy favorite recipes from cookbooks to round out our recipe binder — Book our camping trip for this fall — Have a little three-person game night every Friday this month with June, after Shep goes to bed. As I’ve said, gotta start early :) — Use the Peloton app to move every day this month on days we don’t ride our bikes or otherwise exercise. Looking forward to exploring cardio, strength, stretching, yoga, and more!
Sending you all love, friends. Let’s make this a really great month ahead.
I wrote about how we meal plan back in 2013, and though many things in our life have changed since then (two new babies, new house, now COVID), the bones of our meal planning process remain the same. There are a few tweaks and changes that have fine-tuned this weekly rhythm over the years, though, so I thought it was time for an update!
If you’re new to the idea of meal planning, it might feel really intimidating or complicated. Maybe you’re worried it will take your whole Saturday. I get it! Even though I’ve been meal planning for years, there’s still a part of me that resists sitting down and doing it each week. But, this simple process saves me SO much time, energy, and money that it is completely worth it!! In contrast, on the weeks where we fly by the seat of our pants (maybe if we’ve been traveling the weekend before), I’m basically pulling my hair out by Tuesday. If that’s you every week, I think you’ll love this post!
Let’s go!
When I meal plan:
Though I’m not perfect at it, I try to sit down and plan our meals for the week on Friday evening, after the kids are in bed. With COVID, I aim to go to the grocery store pretty much first thing Saturday morning, so making our grocery list the night before ensures I’m not scrambling in the morning.
For me, planning our meals on the weekend, and as early in the weekend as possible, is crucial. As mentioned above, once the week starts churning it’s hard for me to find time to do it AND go shopping, which really throws off our whole rhythm. And if for some reason I wait until Sunday to do it, it adds to the “Sunday scaries” and I’m more likely to feel grumpy about the task. Getting it accomplished early in the weekend works best for us!
The basics of meal planning:
I plan one week at a time – usually Saturday-Friday – using my simple meal planning tracker (download a copy here!). In our current conditions, we’re typically cooking six nights a week and getting takeout on Friday or Saturday.
My first step in meal planning is always to check my calendar, to see if there are any days we’ll be dining out (dinner at a friend’s house, an event, a late bike ride, or a day where we’re running around and don’t have time to cook), or whether we’re expecting any guests. These days, there’s not much to check :)
With those accounted for, I start filling in meals for the other nights: — I’ll ask John, and sometimes June, whether they have any requests. — I’ll check the weather, to see if we’re expecting cold and rain or warmth and sun – it affects the kind of food I want to eat! — I’ll consider the leftover situation, as we balance meals that leave enough for the next day’s lunches and not having too much food. — I’ll check the fridge to see if there are any leftover ingredients we could use up (maybe plain Greek yogurt or extra rice). — Finally, I’ll try to balance cheaper versus more expensive recipes and vegetable versus meat-centric.
Something that helps me in all of this? Consulting our record of past meals. I have multiple years of those meal planning tracker sheets in the back of my recipe binder, which is not only a neat historical record, but handy for coming up with fresh ideas when I’m stumped!
Mostly, though, I flip through my recipe binder to see what looks good. On a normal week, we’ll make 4-5 familiar recipes and 1-2 new ones, which for us is a good balance of keeping things fresh and not making things unnecessarily complicated. I collect recipes to try on this Pinterest board, while every family favorite recipe in our binder that’s available on the internet can be found in this board! More on my recipe binder here.
How we decide what to eat when:
Once we have our meals planned, they go on the meal planning doc. On Sunday, I loosely assign our meals to days of the week on our kitchen whiteboard, though we’re very open to flexing it based on whether we’re in need of leftovers and what we’re in the mood for that morning. Our easily-visible whiteboard is an easy way to keep John and I on the same page, too.
How I grocery shop:
With our meals set, I make a grocery list. As you all know, I recently upgraded to a custom model, which has been well worth the hour-and-a-half it took me to design! Organizing my shopping by aisle helps me zip through the store and get back to my favorite people. Though we used to do more hopping around from store to store before kids, I now consider any slight increase I pay in price by doing all my shopping at Publix well worth the time I gain back by going to a store 5 minutes from my house where I am very familiar with the layout and can get everything I need in one fell swoop. Plus, it truly is a pleasure to shop there – the people are so nice, the store, bright and clean, and I can clip coupons digitally!
The one exception? We have a Costco membership, and make a trip there about once a quarter to stock up on paper towels, toilet paper, unsweetened applesauce, applesauce pouches, butter, bar soap, the Costco version of LaCroix, chicken breasts, marinara sauce, etc. If we had a second freezer, I’m sure we’d be able to take more advantage of the bulk meat, but as it is, one pack of chicken basically fills the available space in our freezer.
Some of you have asked why I don’t go the grocery delivery route. There are a number of reasons:
— I generally don’t mind grocery shopping, so it’s not really something I’m looking to avoid in the first place. — I’m not in the regular rhythm of it, so picking and choosing from the online dashboard seems to take me more time than just going to the store. — I like to pick out my own produce. — The one time I did try it, I felt like I was fielding questions from the shopper by text the whole half hour she was there, so it wasn’t like I had uninterrupted time with my family anyway. — I am kind of weird, and generally prefer the slow and analog route — And I am cheap, and don’t like to pay extra or have the need to tip :)
From door to door, it takes me about 40-45 minutes to shop on a Saturday morning!
Of course, as I’m making my grocery list, I check the pantry and fridge to see if we already have any of the ingredients needed. I check our freezer whiteboard to see if there’s anything in there that’s on the list. And I check our Alexa shopping list, where we add items we need to restock throughout the week. (I’m just waiting for the day June says, “Alexa, add marshmallows to my shopping list,” ha!)
I thought I’d end with a sample weekly menu, from earlier in May:
Saturday:chicken tikka masala with frozen peas added, jasmati rice, and naan Sunday:taco soup, mini cornbread muffins (from a box mix), and green salads for the grown-ups Monday:Marcella’s bolognese, tagliatelle, green salads/roasted broccoli for kiddos, and frozen cheesy garlic bread (this was the new recipe for the week, and it was added to the binder!) Tuesday: three-pepper pizza (Publix dough with marinara sauce, mozzarella, and chopped poblano, red bell pepper, and pepperoncinis) and green salads Wednesday: hot dogs, baked beans, cucumber and tomato salad, and chips Thursday:kale chickpea pasta Friday: takeout :)
In meal planning, as with so many other things, what works for one person may not work for another. While I salute those of you who throw dishes together from what’s in your pantry, or plan a month of meals at a time, or stop at the store every day on your way home from work, this is the rhythm that has worked well for our family over the last many years. I hope you you’ll find an idea or two in this post that might work for yours!
Thanks for sticking with me through this massive post, friends!! In addition to any meal planning thoughts you might like to share, I’m curious whether you’d be interested in me sharing some of our weekly meal plans on a weekly basis? Janssen shares hers every week, which I don’t think I could commit to, but I do enjoy reading hers and getting ideas! Maybe one week out of every month? Let me know what you think!
