10 Meaningful DIY Ideas to Preserve Your Life’s Story
Every life has a story to tell, and it’s also the case that life is very short. It seems to get quicker as you get older; everyone’s expressed to a friend or family member at some point in their lives how time seems to be flying by, or how the year seemed to have barely started by the time it came to a close.
That’s why it’s so important to treasure the good times, and one way of doing so is by physically immortalizing your memories.
There are many different ways of doing so, most of which don’t cost you very much at all. In this article, you’ll learn 10 meaningful DIY ideas for preserving your life’s story.
1. Creating a Scrapbook
One of the best ways to preserve your memories is by building a scrapbook.
Scrapbooks are great because of their versatility. You can add whatever you want to the page, be it photos, meaningful small objects that can be fixed to the paper, and pieces of text or physical notes you want to save from a particular time period.
They’re a lot of fun to make, too, and you don’t need a lot – just the blank book itself, craft tape, an assortment of colorful pens and pencils, and some scrapbook paper of your choosing.
2. Making a Patchwork Memory Quilt
If you’re interested in learning a whole new skill as you embolden your best memories, a keepsake quilt may be a good option for you.
The best way to design these is with patchwork squares, each one denoting a specific memory. The idea is that the piece can evolve, with new patches being added over time. It’s common for such an item to be passed down through the generations, with each new owner adding a patch or two before it gets given to the next person.
3. Filming a Family Video Series
These days, everyone has a powerful video camera on their phone, which makes for a great opportunity to film a family video series.
What used to require a big and bulky camcorder can now be done with ease: you’ll follow your family for a week (with their consent, of course), and film daily life to then look back on years later.
4. Using a Journal
One of the simplest, yet most effective ways of documenting and preserving memories is through the use of a journal. The practice of journaling doesn’t have to encompass anything flashy – simply dedicate a page or paragraph to whatever is happening in your life that day (you could also write an entry each week rather than daily if you prefer).
The type of journal you buy is up to you, but if you want to include pictures, consider getting a larger notebook. You may also want to get yourself a nice pen to write with, which may help encourage you to establish the practice as a daily or weekly ritual (you don’t want it to feel like a chore).
5. Making a Milestone Music Playlist
One very simple way of linking back to the past is to tap into the nostalgia associated with it, and sometimes, there’s no better way of doing that than with the power of music.
Listening to a certain song can immediately transport you back to a specific point in time, so people are now creating dedicated playlists on Spotify and Apple Music to revisit those memories. It’s a simple yet powerful tool.
6. Curating a Family Recipe Book
Cooking is an important foundational stone in many cultures, and if this is the case for your family, a family recipe book is a great item to pass down through each generation.
The idea is that each owner adds a couple of new recipes of their creation (or ones they’ve tweaked) to the book, resulting in a compendium of the family’s favorite meals.
7. Recording an Audio Archive
One relatively new way of preserving the past is voice recordings. With this method, you interview other family members or friends for insights into their lives, which may otherwise be forgotten or distorted with time.
The recordings also catch all the little intricacies, such as the way someone laughs and how they express themselves. These can be listened to at any time, bringing comfort to those who are missing a loved one.
8. Building a Tradition Box
Tradition boxes are a great way to document your life. There are a few methods for setting them up, but essentially, the idea is that the box sits prominently in the house and has each family member add small items (which could be little trinkets, notes, and so on) as time goes by.
You could have a box dedicated to each year, for example, whereby at the end of the year (or later than this if you’re treating it as a sort of time capsule), you and the family open it back up and explore the memories hidden within together.
9. Planting a Memory Garden
Memory gardens can represent a unique way of commemorating a particular memory. For this method, you pick a small segment of your existing garden to dedicate to that particular thing, which could be anything you like.
Maybe there are certain flowers that you associate with a specific event, in which case, you could plant them in this space to immortalize the moment. It could also be that you plant a tree to mark something special, which will continue to grow long after the moment has passed.
10. Creating a Digital Legacy
While analog methods of preserving memories are undoubtedly nicer, there are also things you can do in the digital world that have a lot of merit.
One practice many utilize is the creation of a digital legacy. This is where you make a multimedia collection of sorts, which can include photos, videos, and scanned-in letters or notes, with the aim of avoiding the risks associated with physical objects, such as them getting lost or damaged.
Given the fact that hard drives can fail, using something like Google Drive or another cloud-based system is recommended.
Final Word
There are dozens of fun ways to make memories, with the above list representing only a few. You can’t go wrong with any of these options, though, so get creative and see what you can come up with.
