What My Mom Taught Me About Memory-Keeping — A Conversation With Donna
My mom, Donna, is the reason I fell in love with memory-keeping in the first place. Long before I had a name for any of it, she had me at the kitchen table picking out stickers and gluing photos into scrapbooks — mostly, I think, because I wanted to be wherever she was.
For this episode, my first with a guest, I sat down with her to talk about all of it: what memory-keeping looked like when I was growing up, how her own approach has changed since, and something she does now that I didn't expect. She works part-time for a friend who's a fiduciary trustee, and every so often that means helping clean out a client's home after they've passed. She's seen firsthand what happens to a lifetime of photo albums when there's no one left to want them — and it's changed how she thinks about her own.
Key takeaways
What memory-keeping looked like before it had a name — scrapbook clubs, magnetic photo albums, baby books
How accessibility (film, cellphones, video) has changed what and how much we document
Why my mom has started downsizing her own albums, and the question she keeps asking herself: "Who is this going to matter to?"
What she's seen happen to photo albums when someone passes without family who wants them
The box of letters she found — and the collage she made so they wouldn't be forgotten
Why she doesn't regret keeping too much, only wishes she'd been in more of the photos herself
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Maddie: I'm very excited to have my mom, Donna, on this podcast as my first official guest. And I really wanted her to be the first guest because she is the one that introduced me to memory keeping, scrapbooking, and so I'm excited to get into what inspires you and what your approach to memory keeping has been throughout my life and yours. And also how that's shifted over time. So welcome, Mom.
Donna: Thank you. Happy to be here.
Maddie: I can tell.
[Show open plays]
Maddie: Hey, welcome to Postcards for Posterity. Make the memories, keep the story. I'm Maddie, and this show is for moms and anyone who takes the pictures and holds the stories in their families but doesn't wanna miss their life while trying to document it.
So just to start, could you tell our listener about yourself and your background?
Donna: I have two kids, one being Maddie, and I have an older son, Collin. I've lived in California for a little over 42 years. I've always really enjoyed art in any different shape or form, and I always considered photography and taking pictures and putting them together, a part of that.
So I have tons of scrapbooks. Every trip that I took throughout my life I've always made a separate scrapbook of and/or a photo album before scrapbooking was popular. And then also each child, Maddie and Collin, have their own photo albums through the years, I have a whole closet full of photo albums, shelves full of photo albums and/or scrapbooks some being a little bit more artistic than others. I don't know how many remember the magnetic photo albums where it's just a three-ring binder with the little glossy sheets that you stick a photo under.
And if you're lucky, you put a comment on it so you could remember what it was about and/or the year it was taken, so I still have tons of those. It's just been a part of my life and I've really enjoyed it. And then about 35 years ago, I got into decoupage and I started doing what they call reverse decoupage with glass plates and doing decoupage trays, and did that for many years and had my own Etsy shop for a while, just lately I would say in the last four to five years, I really got out of that and started painting. And so I really enjoy that. I have already tons of scrapbooks and/or art journals whatever you wanna call them of all the paintings and stuff that I have done over the years.
So that's where my journey has been. It was interesting because when COVID happened one of the things I did do was go through all my scrapbooks and photo albums that I had at the time and try to consolidate them, because it was just something to do and we were all isolated,
so it was just a good project for me to do, and it took me several days to do it. I still have a closet full of scrapbooks and albums, but I did consolidate a lot and threw away a lot of things. Like I had wedding invitations from friends of mine that I didn't even know who they were anymore.
I was like, "Who is this? I don't even know who this is. Why do I have a wedding invitation from them?" So anyway, I kept all of that type of thing. I have a scrapbook with my — every report card that I got when I was in elementary school, so that's in there. So I have to thank my mom and dad for that, to let me keep those, because normally parents keep those type of things for their kids.
But for whatever reason, I had mine. So I went through all of them as well.
Maddie: You were the one that kept them?
Donna: Yes, I was the one who kept them.
Maddie: Okay.
Donna: And back when I was that young I kept all of my report cards and stuff and eventually put them in a scrapbook. So yeah, that's what I did.
Maddie: What was that like, growing up? It sounds like you had the desire to save things growing up. Did grandma and grandpa have that initiative as well at all?
Donna: Maybe that's why I did do it, because they didn't do that. If you look at the scrapbook I have of our family, when I was younger and a baby, et cetera, there were quite a few pictures of me as a baby in black and whites and that type of thing.
And I was born in Italy, and then we lived in Morocco for a year. My father was in the service, we traveled a little bit. And there were some pictures of me, maybe as a baby and then when I was maybe about from one to three, and then there really wasn't any pictures after that.
I do have a brother and sister, a younger brother and sister. There's hardly any pictures of them when they were babies. Maybe one or two of them as babies. And then it wasn't until they were like in elementary school and stuff, and I was the oldest, that I started taking pictures — my dad and mom bought me a camera, so then I did take pictures. And those are the type of pictures that are in those scrapbooks when we were all elementary school age kind of thing. So that's when it started. Any pictures that we do have, for the most part I took as our family was getting further along in age.
Maddie: What do you feel made you wanna do that? Is there something that inspired that and then has continued now?
Donna: I can't think of a thing that really comes to mind as to what inspired it. I really liked seeing pictures of our family and having memories and that type of thing.
When I did the scrapbooks or photo albums of my trips, most of the pictures taken on those were of scenery, not particularly of me in the picture. I don't really like to see pictures of myself, to be honest. So those, they're not as interesting as looking at some of the old family albums and that type of thing where they have a lot, obviously, people in it versus scenery and that kind of thing.
But there isn't anything that I can think of that really made me want to do that. We did live in Turkey for two years when I was 12 and 13 years old, and they had the camera that you take the picture and it, the picture came out right away, and it developed on its own kind of thing.
You didn't have to take it to somewhere to get the film developed, and that was really popular at the time. And I remember feeling like really cool that I had that camera. So yeah, so I took a lot of pictures that way. But —
Maddie: I'm sure you were.
Donna: Unfortunately some of those pictures, when you look back on them now, they're all faded and they have streaks through them and stuff like that, so the quality wasn't that great. Like some of the old-fashioned real cameras kind of thing.
Maddie: I was actually reading about that recently, that some of the Polaroid film cameras fade more easily. Which I love Instax. I use it so much, but — yeah — it does make me think about it's a bit more of a temporary fun thing.
Donna: I think the name of this particular camera, I could be wrong, but what comes to mind is it was called a Swinger for some reason.
And it's not like I sat around with my friends when I was in junior high or high school and stuff and talked about taking pictures and memories and that type of thing.
I just never did that. It was more of a private thing, that I enjoyed doing, and I don't know of any friends that really did that either. It's not like something we talked about. It was just something that I did.
Something I think about now is just how things have evolved with the accessibility of taking photos. The iPhone wasn't really popular until — maybe 20 years ago, and so — yeah — we could take the cellphone camera photos, but those were awful quality. I think you really had to have a physical camera to be able to capture those memories. And then probably when you were younger, that was somewhat expensive 'cause it was film.
One of the major things I think that have changed because of the cellphone is videos. Because when you and Collin were growing up you had to have a video camera to take the videos.
And then the videos we do have is, they're not that many, and they were on the video film, whatever, and then it was on a cassette tape, and then we converted it to DVD, and now I'm trying to convert it again to a USB or something, and it's something that we don't watch, because it's more difficult to get the — I don't know, the plane, like the computer.
If I had a USB I guess I could just plug it in. But at the laptop that I'm in right now, it doesn't have access anymore, so you can't stick the DVD of the video in there. And now with your generation and stuff and younger, videos, there's millions of videos out there because it's so easy to do.
When you guys were growing up, it really wasn't. It was more of a process. So we have pictures, lots of pictures of you and Collin, but not a lot of videos at all, and I think most people in my age group that have children your age have the same thing where there was not a lot of videos taken.
Sometimes I feel like that's a good thing, it feels overwhelming 'cause I think when you take that many videos it's very time-consuming to go through videos versus looking through photos. And then — to your point, even accessibility now, I was seeing something recently about people take a lot of vertical videos.
Maddie: And that's really more for content.
Donna: Yeah. We've lost the art of the home video is what this person was talking about.
Maddie: That's true. That's true.
Donna: And I remember telling my friend over and over again when that started getting popular, taking videos for social media and stuff, I was like, "Keep doing the horizontal videos."
Yeah. And then I got wrapped into the vertical, and now when I show the vertical videos on our TV or something through an app that we have it doesn't feel formatted correctly — and you miss a lot of context. So I've started doing more horizontal videos.
I still need to transfer all the videos I took from my camcorder thing from our trips and stuff. It's not easy.
Maddie: I wanted to ask you, too, you had this innate desire to document things when you were growing up.
And then when I was growing up, I feel like you really passed that on to me, but it was also something that we were able to do together. I remember going to Michaels or whatever and picking out stickers for our travel books. I have my first sort of scrapbook, and I used all those little stars.
I remember being very excited about the star stickers. And was that intentional that you wanted to do that, or was that just like — just for fun or how did you — how did that happen?
Donna: That was intentional. I don't think scrapbooking in general is nearly as popular as it was 10, 15 years ago even.
It was a thing. They had scrapbooking clubs and, I have friends that have these beautiful scrapbooks that they created and there were classes on it, so I don't think that's really being done anymore, that I can see anyway. It's just not as popular as a thing as creating these pieces of art, I really enjoyed doing that, and I wanted to get you involved, because you were always very artistic too as a small child. And it was just a fun thing to do together, and have you be a part of it because you were part of the scrapbook, anyway.
Maddie: Yeah. So for you to decorate it, that was definitely intentional.
When we were growing up, did you have a system in mind for how you approached memory keeping? We didn't really necessarily have a yearly family photo album —
Donna: it was more after big trips or events or that type of thing.
Maddie: Yeah.
Donna: So yeah, just like when I was saying that I had scrapbooks or photo albums of you and Collin, growing up and stuff, and there was, like, a baby one for your first year, with comments and stuff. And baby books were also very popular back in the day.
It's like you would write what — when they lost their first tooth or, what was their first word, et cetera. So that was all part of it, and it had places for pictures as well. So that was, like, a thing back then. But yeah,
it's interesting, too, 'cause I think there has been a resurgence in scrapbooking the way we used to do it. Or especially with what they call junk journaling. So people just take different scraps and put them together and create this.
But for me, that kind of approach is a bit more artistic because some of that paper is not necessarily archival or long-lasting. So it's a nice fun thing to do but it's not necessarily something that is maybe for — to pass on for future generations, and as time has gone on I've gotten to more simplified, very straightforward documenting things through either a digital album or just even a standard photo album of putting the pictures in. But I still see a fun part. I think it's funny you said you were private about it, and I remember part of what I did growing up was I would create albums for all of my friends.
Like Jen and Kelsey and stuff. I remember buying a huge album, and I would put all of our pictures from high school and make it really elaborate and —
Maddie: I remember that, yeah. I think it was like, how people have friendship bracelets and beads?
Donna: Yeah. That was, like, my version of — I'd create the mix CDs, and I would create these big albums so that I'd be like, "Remember me? Don't forget me."
Maddie: Yeah, exactly. "I'm in your life forever now."
Donna: That's sweet.
Maddie: Yeah. And I think to your point, too, when you were saying the most interesting thing is seeing the people in it, and sometimes that can be hard to put yourself in the photo. But when Great Aunt Marianne passed away, I remember going through all of her slides.
She had slides, and we were just getting rid of most of them because they were images of her travels — just landscapes and stuff, yeah — but it didn't have any people. And it really made me rethink how I was approaching photography or what I was taking pictures of and why. Do you feel like your way of documenting things has evolved over time based on experiences?
Donna: Yeah, one thing is right now, I'm basically semi-retired and working part-time for Cindy, my friend, and she's a fiduciary trustee for a lot of elderly clients.
And one of her services is that we do clean out clients' homes once they've passed. And the one thing that I've found that's really changed me just in the last few years is a lot of these clients don't have any family left, or if they do have family left, it's not the type of family that's left that wants particular albums or photo albums, even pictures of that person.
So they might want one or two photographs, but we've cleaned out people's homes that have tons of photo albums. Maybe not as much as I do, but they do have quite a few. And at least 50% of them have been single women who have been married and divorced, and they really don't have any children or don't have any family left, and they just have some friends.
But when we clean out their houses and we find all these photo albums, they basically go into the trash because nobody really wants them. So that made me go through my albums again — but do I really need these, do these pictures mean anything to me?
And that's the thing, is trying to downscale all the albums or pictures and stuff that I do have and some of the — you know, like you were saying, the scenery and stuff is just not that important. How many pictures of a hill do you need — so you clean it out that way, but then you think about, who is gonna want these?
Even though I've got you and Collin, it's like I don't know that you guys are gonna want all of these photo albums. You might want a particular picture here and there, but you're not going to particularly want my album of Bali, because it's 95% pictures of the scenery, and who cares, you know —
Except for me, 'cause it's a memory that I have of a place that I loved. But ask me how many times, now that I did the album, that I've actually looked at it since I've made it — that's another thing, we need to enjoy those past memories and stuff, but somehow I've just got them on a shelf, and I don't really pull them off the shelf and look at them. That's another thing as far as being more particular about your memories and what you keep.
Maddie: That is interesting. I feel like it's not super common unless it's part of maybe a routine to bring those memories down and review them and remind yourself of the experiences you've had, which is the whole point. And I think there's a line of outsourcing memories and also being able to reference them and have that reminder. We have Chatbooks that we create for my daughter, and she looks at them, which is fun.
I know those things are not gonna get passed down. They're really just for context right now. And so — I think to your point, it's good to kinda keep in mind what are the things that are, like, legacy, and might be passed down.
Donna: Exactly. And also with that, too, I always feel like there needs to be context.
Maddie: I've seen a photo service where you just upload your photos and they print all the photos in a book of your travel, but that can be a good, fun coffee table thing for now. But again, it doesn't have any context or stories of things that you can pass down. So it's a little bit limiting, I would say.
Yeah. I'd love for you to talk about — you talked about cleaning out people's houses, and I know that there was someone who had a bunch of letters, and I loved what you decided to do with those letters.
Donna: One of the clients that we had was a single lady who had been divorced for over 20-something years, and she had passed.
She had a great group of lady friends. When we were cleaning out her bills, et cetera, I found a lot of typewritten letters written back in the early '80s, late '70s that were passed between her and her mother. And it was just really touching, and it wasn't anything earth-shattering. It was just, "Hey, how are you? This is what's going on in my life," and that kind of thing, and you could just tell that they had a really good bond. And there were tons of the letters, and she kept them all, and I just felt bad throwing them all away, because that's exactly what was happening.
So I did keep several of the letters, and I did a spread in my art journal and collaged a couple of the letters that I really liked. And just did a collaged kind of feature in the scrapbook journal — art journal — that I have.
And so it was my honor to her to do that, and I wrote a little something about her and her mom's relationship based on what I saw going through the letters and stuff. I didn't read every single letter but I got the gist of what was said and stuff.
So I just felt like I needed to do something so that these would be remembered, so that's what I did.
Maddie: Yeah. I love that. I think it's a unique way to — if they did pass it on, sometimes all of those things can also be a lot, and how do you repurpose that? And I love that you took it and made it into its own sort of art piece.
Donna: I created a collage when Matt's uncle passed away — I think it's a nice way to bring different elements together too, for people that have passed on, instead of just their pictures.
Again, just adding a little more context to who they were and their life experience, and yeah.
Maddie: Is there any other thoughts that you have just about documenting your life, especially as you're getting older — was there anything that you would've done differently in terms of documenting, or things that you wouldn't have documented, or different approaches you might have taken?
Donna: Overall, no. I was lucky that I worked for Aaron Brothers, which was an art and framing store, for 10 years —
and I've bought the frames and stuff, and it was just interesting to see how the frame department changed over the years too, where tabletop frames, with the easel in the back and stuff, that particular department was really going down.
Wall frames stayed pretty similar, because I think what people were doing is they were creating gallery walls versus just putting a photo in a frame kind of thing. But I loved that job. Was very creative and it just exposed me to photos in general, because that's what framing's all about.
Framing your art, framing your photos, whatever. So I don't really have any regrets as far as keeping all my albums and that kind of thing. I'm glad I did what I did, honestly. And it's better to go through and have to throw away too much stuff than looking back and going, "Geez, I wish I would've taken more time to do those pictures or whatever."
I think maybe to take more personal pictures versus the landscapes — but that would've just been for me, just looking back. Because you do look back on your old photos sometimes and you go, "Wow, I was skinnier than I thought I was," that kind of thing — when you look back sometimes. 'Cause you have this thing in your mind of how you looked, and then you look at old pictures and you're like — so that's good, too, to go back and look and see, "Oh, okay. Alright. That was not so bad."
Maddie: We can be somewhat judgmental, especially as women —
Donna: Yeah, exactly — but. And I encourage you always to be in the photo, too, because it's for me and grandchildren. And I still don't like it, but yeah.
Maddie: Yeah. You need to get over it.
Donna: Yeah, I know. Have a memory. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Maddie: Awesome. All right. Well —
Thanks, Mom, for being — my first guest. It wasn't as painful as you thought, right?
Donna: Oh, thank you. Yeah, it wasn't. Love you.
Maddie: Talk to you later. Okay, bye.
Donna: Love you.
Maddie: Bye.
Postcards for Posterity is connected to my Love, Maddily blog, and that's where I share additional resources, links, and freebies — ways for you to stay more connected to the memories and people in your life.
My mom, Donna, on scrapbooking, memory-keeping, and what she's learned helping clean out the homes of people who've passed. Episode 10 of Postcards for Posterity.