Update: Is project life for me?

Thank you for starting this thread. I'm in the same boat as mom of adult children, and I'll be reading every post.

I like the idea of using a combination of pocket pages and full pages so I can continue to give bigger occasions a little more space.

Also, I might even organize it seasonally rather than monthly. There's no way weekly is going to happen!

My kids are 20 and 22. I do pocket style scrapping with some full page layouts thrown in here and there. It works great for me. I started with this type of scrapping when my kids were in their late teens. I love it.

Last year I tried out 6x8 (from 9x12) and it was an adjustment, but it’s growing on me. Every now and then I want to do a larger layout, I just put it in a separate book I keep for that purpose.

ETA I scrap by the month, not weekly.

I love Project Life. I'd tried scrapping before in 12x12 on and off and never really got into. Then in 2012, I discovered PL and jumped in Jan 2013. I love that you can do it by week, by month, or over a time span, say a week in a half if you are light on pictures. It helps me remember the tiny things: a skin care product I'm loving, a favorite pair of shoes, a book I loved. I don't have a very good memory and PL has made a huge difference. I try and jot down notes every day for my journaling. I will occasionally do a full size layout. If I don't have another larger layout I feel like doing on the back side of the page protector, I simply slip in a patterned paper I love and move on. Once I realized I could do that, I got a whole lot more relaxed about the process.

I'm doing 9x12 this year. It took me while to get into it, but I'm really enjoying the size. I especially like it for a full page 9x12 layout. Scrapbook.com has some albums & page protectors on sale this weekend.

I feel you on work in your scrappy space. I'm in the same boat.I work from home 2 days and in the office 3 days now and that won't change. I'm really trying to figure out how to make it work. I need to do a purge, a re-org, and I think I'm going to have to suck it up and buy something to accommodate work paperwork and stuff. I'd much rather spend that money on puffy stickers though.

Good luck with your quest! Dearly Dee & Leilanai Scraps are my two favorite you tubers right now for PL videos. They do a mix between simple and more complex PL spreads and their videos are typically under 10 minutes.

So I’m kind of the opposite of you. Mom to 5 still very active kids. But this year I switched to PL. I cold never seem to keep up with my traditional style 12x13 albums and the little everyday things were skipped. So although I love those albums I’m enjoying PL. I don’t feel the need to have so many pictures. I like documenting our everyday life. And I’ve been up to date so I can tell the stories I don’t want to forget like the cute things my toddler says.
Another positive I’ve found is that I’m not cautious about using paper I have. In the past I wouldn’t want to cut something “just in case” I needed a larger piece. So I’ve been going through my stash! And don’t feel the need to buy more and more- major positive for me.

I think PL is a wonderful way to go and if I could go back to when my kids were little I would definitely jump in. I think PL is a much better system for capturing life and memories than traditional scrapbooking.

Currently, my hobby is feeling good from a creativity stand point, more than the memory keeping part. So I know that PL isn't for me right now.

However, I strongly think you can enjoy both in whatever ratio you like! I have divided pages that I add for photo heavy seasons and events - like Christmas, camping, family get togethers. I don't share them here because I haven't figured out how to photograph them through plastic!
(Honestly, since covid I've done very few divided pages...)

My favourite divided protector size is the 9x12 since the 12x12s "flop around" like mentioned above.

Love msliz's idea of a "seasonal" PL spread and I think I might try that. Cathy Zielske does a monthly spread (digitally) which is also appealing to me. If I tried to do weekly, I'd end up with lots of pictures of my coffee cup

I think crafting, any way you prefer, is a good thing. I make monthly travelers notebooks of what we did that month. It’s extremely therapeutic. It took me awhile to find my groove but notebooks are it. I can put whatever my little heart wants in it and that’s fun. I document the mundane things and the big things. And then at the end of the day, it’s a great reminder of what I have. I shop exclusively at cocoa daisy so the monthly stuff is there, like journal cards and embellishments. So it’s like my own project life. My oldest child is gone (I’m not in her life) my middle one is at college and then my youngest has special needs and my husband and I make so many happy memories for him. I have 3 cats and a dog that I love like my children but I’m not going to let them flip through the albums. Lol. Sometimes I wonder if my kids will want these when I’m gone but whether they do or don’t, documenting provides me so much happiness in the moment so I don’t even care. It’s cheaper than therapy. Lol which I probably still need.

I’m an empty nester who stopped scrapping regular 12x12 layouts around 2012. Then I did a December Daily in 2014 which got my mojo going and made me want to scrap again. I currently do one 12x12 pocket page album a year, started back up with that in 2016. I scrap monthly layouts - well, I divide my album into monthly sections, some months have 2 page protectors (mostly Style A), some a bunch more. I use a lot of the old school PL Core Kits, just because it is so much easier for me to have a pre-made color scheme, plus they were so cheap at TM. Print pics, (mostly 3x4), embellish a bit, journal and I’m done. I really enjoy it and find I can reasonably keep up without stressing about it.

Lots of options size-wise. I did a 9x12 one year and liked it, but the albums were scarce for a while so I am back to using my 12x12 stash. Give it a try, bet you will like it.

Remember 4x6/3x4 cards and divided page protectors are just supplies there are no rules to how you use them. Scrapbook the everyday, scrapbook the month, or just scrap a bday party and put them all next to each other. Especially if you have a 12x12 album you can easily mix full 12x12 pages with pocket pages, 9x12, 6x8 or other sized pages all in one book. Give yourself limits as you need them but feel free to break them if they no longer work for you.

I make annual albums divided by month. With in the month I have all sorts of different pages configurations and different themes for my pages. Sometimes I do a "currently" theme to summarize the month, sometimes each kid gets their own page summary, sometimes it's me and the dog that are highlighted and everything else is grouped together. I still love a traditional scrapbook page but I also want to document the smaller things so combining all the options is what works best for me.

Once I finished my kids’ high school 12x12 albums, I decided to move on to pocket pages. My first albums were 8x8 from Tuesday Morning, and I did one per season. It was a good way to break into the new way of memory keeping.

One thing that works for me is putting pictures into the pockets as events occur, weekly, monthly or whatever, leaving empty pockets to go back and add journaling and decorative elements. It’s a different process that took some patience getting used to, but I ended up loving it.

After 8x8 albums, I changed to to 9x12, making about one a year. Sometimes there are 10 pages from a trip, sometimes 2 pages for what I did all summer.

Last year I switched it up again and made passport-size travelers notebooks, one per month, with journaling every single day, random, eventful, anything at all. What a year to start a daily journal! It is a really special thing to look back on, as my personal life also changed dramatically during the turbulent time we all went through. For the future, I am doing random standard-size travelers notebooks as the mood strikes me. I have a big birthday coming up, so I’ll start one about me, life right now.

Try different things and see what sticks. I love the way our hobby has evolved, and seeing what everyone makes it work for them. So many inspiring and encouraging Peaple on our board!

What ^ said

Pocket scrapping is AWESOME! So are Traveler's Notebooks.

And putting YOU in the albums is the best part (now you, former you, both, words, pictures, YOU!)

So, in other words,