To my 'non chronological' scrapping tribe . . .

I don’t scrap chronologically either, and alas, have thousands of unprinted pages. I do make books, usually vacation albums.

The other type of book I make has themed layouts; for example I have several Christmas books in which I have gathered layouts depicting a mix of photos from the early 1900s up to now. Other themed books feature Halloween, Easter, 4th of July, sports, the Pandemic, or birthdays. I made my granddaughter a school days album that went from her preschool days up to her high school graduation.

Another thing I do is make folders of high res jpgs according to holidays and have them playing on my big screen tv when we have family gatherings. They are always a hit!

 

Another option is to use a digital frame to display a rotating selection of pages. I love mine!

 

Same but I do want to print my layouts at some point.

We would get along very well on how to file name pages I do add day too: yyyy_mmdd_eventname
It came from how Japan dates things, always in this order and I like it Year / Month / Day.

 

I think I found an idea for my Christmas present!!!
I did think of it long ago but never looked for it. Just the other day hubby was asking what I wanted for Christmas and knowing we have to buy a new air conditionner for our bedroom I was like, mmh I don't need anything but I changed my mind!!!

 

I, like Ang, have a system of LO naming that starts with yymmdd_name so the year comes first and I sort it into the folder with that name, I normally have a couple of recent *unprinted years' folders on the go, and when they are full enough, I'd order a book. I also print books by theme on occasion, it can be a vacation or event, or a holiday, like I have a Halloween special through the years... For this year I printed a lot, a knee jerk reaction as I dropped an EHD that had the only copy of the photographs from 2004 to 2024... and all of my LAYOUTS EVER. The photos pre 2019 were archived, so I only lost the five years worth of photos and ALL the layouts. So around Black Friday I have packed up everything recent (2022, 2023 and this year's folders) and sent them to print three books... Just made me less unhappy about losing the five years worth of original photos... at least those three years worth of LOs were still on MY laptop in the Work in progress state...

 

I scrap whatever appeals at the time &/or works with the products I'm needing to use.

 

The only downside is that they are a smidge small and I've never found one that comes in a square size. Mine is from Nixplay and it works well and is pretty easy to add photos (over wifi).

 

Oh no! This makes me feel a little naseous! I'm sorry you lost those photos an dlayouts!

 

I've never scrapped chronologically, though I do usually scrap at least a few photos from every month (ever since I started digiscrapping in 2007). I've heard of the idea of putting layouts into folders by year, but I wanted to keep things super simple. So I print annual albums of whatever pages I made that year. The pages are automatically in the order I created them. So for the last 9 years my albums have all begun with MOC layouts. Throughout the year, if I'm scrapping for a challenge, sometimes that dictates that I use an older photo. Or, I just might be in the mood to scrap something old. I generally have some kind of photo project or regular weekly scrapping plan that keeps me scrapping current photos too. So my albums appear to have a chronological aspect, with lots of random old pictures stuck in here and there.

This is a reason putting the date and some journaling on every page is very important to me. Often I even put two dates: one for the date(s) of the photos, another for the date of the journaling or the date I created the page.

 

I have photobooks printed of layouts that I made yearssss ago. I scrap sporadically but I like printing chronologically. I'd usually label the book with the years of the photos taken, e.g. 2010-2015, 2015-2020, etc. Nothing too precise, the years were there just so people would know the rough timeline.

I try not to overthink the timeline part because that's what's usually hindering me from actually printing my layouts, and my family don't really care about precise timeline. They just enjoy seeing the layouts and reliving the memories in it.

 

My process is somewhat similar to Karen's. i don't scrap chronologically but I print chronologically. The only thing I do chronologically is a weekly layout, which is about half of my scrapbooking pages.

I have a spreadsheet that has every layout I've ever created, back to 1999. Paper and digital. The title of the layout, the year to which it relates, the general topic (family, holiday, vacation, project 52), the date I made it, the number of photos, and then a blank line for what book it's printed in. If it's a paper layout, I also have a place to check whether I've scanned it yet or not. When I'm ready to print, I sort the lists to figure out what I'm printing, what holes I'm missing (i.e. if I want to print a 2015 book and I find I have nothing from Spring of 2015, I'll see that when I sort by 2015), and I can scrap a few layouts to fill in the holes, then print.

 

i haven't read everyone's process so i'm not sure if i'm repeating but i switched to a 'then and now' format a while back because my photos are non-chron.. too and instead of me actually searching for the date on every page as i load it into whichever book company's site to arrange them by date, i just pair an old-ish photo with a new-ish photo that has a similar theme so the contrast or similarities are shown across a double page even when they weren't scrapped as a spread... (and it's night here so excuse the glarey lighting in these pics)

so this one the top spread is of my son in two different lake locations, similar location, different ages obviously; the one below is my DD in her 'look at me' magic phase, contrasted with the headphones on 'leave me alone' teen phase - plus our dining table and chairs changed at some point btwn those years
(Photo also shows the glossy default paper of Shutterfly vs the more matte-ish lustre paper of Mixbook)


top one is a contrast of what nights look like at different ages; bottom is portraits taken yrs apart

And it makes my covers a bit easier too - the format i've used for years is to take either a LO from in the album and tweak it so it's a bit different and then flip it and use an alternate photo for the back cover, or just repeat one of the oldest photos and one of the newest photos that i have scrapped within that album somehow and use them as my covers and just to put the date range on the spine of the album.


So the bottom front cover repeats one of the portraits in the photo up above & i just flipped the paper and put in another younger photo on the back (and again, Shutterfly glossy hard photocovers vs Mixbook more matte/soft touch covers)

 

THis is what I do as well. It's fun to see a mix of "present" and "past" memories together in one book.

 

Hmmm... this piqued my interest. Do you have a 12x12 sized frame? Any recommendations?

ETA: I read your later comment that you haven't found a square one. Lol. Drat.

 

I want to redo my paper pages. I’m not sure where to start though. I’m thinking about starting these pages the nd half of this year.

 

Hopping in a few weeks late, but similar to Karen, I keep a running spreadsheet with the events I intend to scrap and highlight them once they are finished. I go one step further and have separate Tabs for each book so that once I've finished all the layouts from a particular year, I will print them and put them in to albums. Like many others, I have Backblaze to protect me from any lost media while the layouts sit on my computer unprinted. A few years back I converted my excel sheet into a google sheet that I can access on my phone away from home which I love having because it allows me to read challenges at work and reference my list of outstanding layouts and sort of pre-plan what page I'd like to make for each challenge!