How to squeeze out a little more scrapbooking time!

What seems like many years ago, I was a "business person" who worked in the business world before I got involved in scrapbooking and the craft world. I used to carry a Day Timer everywhere and I frequently attended seminars on Time Management. Over the last seven years as a stay-at-home mom and work-at-home mom, I thought that many of those "business person" habits had been left behind and forgotten.

However, on closer examination, I realized that some of those time management principles had crept into my scrapbooking and home life after all, and that they were helping me get things done. Time management can help us save time and money with our scrapbooking.

The basic elements of time management are:

• Evaluating your use of time.

• Focusing on your priorities.

• Planning for effective use of time.

• Using time more effectively.

• Creating more time.

Step one: Evaluate the use of your scrapbooking time

Take a minute and grab a piece of paper right now. Quickly write down the steps you take to create a typical page layout.

I am sure that most scrapbookers had no idea that an "average page" could take 22 hours of their time and cost $100 in addition to the supplies needed for your page. Obviously, the sample log is just a sample. Sometimes you will have all the supplies you need at home or you will have a great layout idea and it will take less time, but other times, you might spend more time than this on a layout if the supplies are hard to find, or the page requires elaborate matting, paper piecing or lettering. Also remember this didn't include the supplies for the page - just the expenses incurred in creating the page. This example makes it possible to see that it would be EASY to invest this many hours and this amount of money for a single layout.

Consider the number of children you have and the number of photos you take. If each layout requires an investment of 20-25 "premium hours" of your time, most of us will not ever finish our children's scrapbooks. Why take a chance that you will have 22 hour/$100 pages in your scrapbooks when time management can help you save time and money?

Step Two: Focusing on your priorities

When you are planning your scrapbook pages think about the reason that you scrapbook. We all have different reasons for scrapbooking. Some scrapbook to preserve memories, some scrapbook to create a memento of childhood, some scrapbook to preserve family history, some scrapbook because they enjoy the craft, some scrapbook to pass along family values and others scrapbook to build a child's self-esteem. Probably most of us scrapbook for a number of these reasons.

• If we want to preserve our children's childhood memories for them, but want to ensure that we are able to finish the project, we may want to combine pages that are quick and easy along with our artistic endeavors. In my books I try and create very special pages for the special events in our lives, but I let the less important events be represented by pages that are simple and fast to complete.

• If you consider journaling to be the most important part of the scrapbook, you may want to spend extra time taking journaling classes and doing your journaling while your pages have a simple design.

• If journaling is a priority, also consider using pre-cut acid free paper to do your journaling at the time of an event instead of waiting until later when your memory has faded and the details are hard to recall.

Step Three: Planning for effective use of your time

Review the time log above and you can see that in addition to using "premium time " wisely, we need to try and reduce the number of hours spent per layout but not sacrifice the outcome or the quality of the pages. One way to do this is to do group-like activities. Cropping several batches of photos at the same time, looking for multiple layout ideas at the same time, looking through your supplies at the same time for materials that will be used on more than one layout are effective suggestions. You may also shop for 20 layouts at the same time instead of just one or two layouts and save a large amount of time at the store as well as travel time and gas.

Do you have any "waiting time " on the phone or in lines or "found time " like TV commercials or while your kids play in the back yard or at the park that can be used for scrapbooking tasks? How about small bits and pieces of time in your day that otherwise are wasted? Can you replace some of the "premium time" that you use for scrapbooking with "waiting time" and "found time?" Think about your schedule and time usage and write down another sample log. You may be surprised at how much time you truly have!

Written by Jennia Hart