Problem: In the last few years, I haven't been very consistent in the way I keep track of what we've done. Some years I write in wall calendars, other times I've used Google Calendars, and sometimes I just use photos of events to remember what I've done! I wanted a simple way to have it all in one spot!
Source of inspiration: Design Sponge
Project cost:
- A drawer organizer to hold the recipe cards ($1 at the Dollar Tree)
- 4 packs of recipe cards ($1 each at the Dollar Tree)
- Date Stamp (borrowed one, so it was free!)
What I did:
- What definitely took the longest was gathering all the data of things that have happened in the last few years... If you decide to start fresh, then it would definitely save you lots of time since you can skip this step completely. I wanted to go back since the year I started going out with my husband. I went through my entire gmail calendar, my photos, some past emails, etc etc. I wanted to mark down all trips, events, concerts, weddings, etc. I made a huge spreadsheet on the computer with the months as headers, then each row was the day of the month. I just wrote the event in the cell, then put the year in brackets afterwards.
- Once that was all done, I stamped every single recipe card... from Jan 01 to Dec 31! Took a while but it just looks so clean and neat. I used one colour per month so that it'd be easy to know when a new month started.
- Then the fun part was writing all the info on the cards... That part was really quick since I had done the dirty work and everything was on the spreadsheet. I just put the year, then wrote down whatever happened that day.
- And there you have it... A Memory Drawer!!
Why I love this:
- Now that the previous years are already done, it'll be easy to maintain daily
- You never know what you'll see when you pick up a card... Could be something from last year, or 5 years ago!
- I know this would be easy to keep track of online, but I just love having physical cards to look at. There's something special with just picking a card at random and seeing all the things you've done on that specific day!
- My memory is so bad, so this is a great way to remember the cool stuff I've done in my life :)
