If you’re an elder millennial or gen-xer, you probably have a host of shoeboxes full of photos or scrapbooks that contain memories for decades. It’s been a minute since doing this, but as a kid I remember sitting around and talking through each photo or ticket stub. I loved getting postcards from placed I traveled and keeping little paper keepsakes when going to a cool place. Now our memories are stored on our phones, the cloud, or our social media feeds. Where this is great for saving space and paper, there is something about that tactile feeling that I miss.

There has been a recent resurgence of hard copy or paper to pen items like planners, memory books, printed photo books, mini photos and more. Oh and how could we talk about memory keeping without mentioning vision boards? Vision board parties are a fun way to set intentions, get to know others on a deeper level, and dreaming big. In fact, junk journaling has been developed as a less meticulous and less time consuming form of scrapbooking. Type in junk journaling on Pinterest and you will see a slew of inspo waiting for you.

I’ve loved keeping my planners as a way to look back to the past and to spark memories I may have left behind. In fact, when designing the Nine to Kind Possibility Planner I considered the notion of having a planner be a day to day scrapbook! Since our planners can be a constant companion, we feel there are ways to bridge the idea of memory keeping to our schedule keepers! Keep reading for ideas of how to use the Nine to Kind Possibility Planner to keep track of you precious moments.

Inside Cover Vision Board

Inspired by a member of the Nine to Kind Community, they used the inside cover to hold stickers with inspiring messages and notes for new habits. Creating a ritual of decorating your inside covers with intentions, soothing photos, inspiring quotes, and whatever else sparks joy can be a great start when you get a fresh planner! Great items to use for the vision board are magazine pages, photos, printed out pictures from Pinterest, and more. For the most ease, use glue dots, stickers, or a glue stick to adhere your items to the inside covers.

Bonus Idea: Use the front cover for your beginning of planner intentions and the back cover for your end of planner reflections!

Junk Journaling

Junk Journaling is taking items that are sentimental (or considered trash potentially) and giving them a home inside of a notebook, or in this case a planner! Items like ticket stubs, postcards, notes, menus, pretty tissue paper, pressed flowers, receipts, tags, programs, ribbons, plane or bus tickets, greeting cards, business cards, matchbook covers, leaves and more. The idea is to take things that can be laid flat and adhered to paper.

In the Nine to Kind Possibility Planner, each week includes two note taking pages. Those pages can be home for your junk journaling finds! If you don’t have time to tape them down in the moment, you can store them in the associated weeks and revisit. You can write notes next to the items, or collage them without words. Not ready to commit to a full page? Save a thing or two and adhere them next to your weekly layout or in the note pages. Junk Journaling is meant to be beautifully imperfect (shocker for us perfectionists right?).

Gratitude Lists

I always want to add a disclaimer when discussing gratitude…Gratitude practices are not about erasing the not-so-good in our lives or to shame us out of bad emotions, they are meant to balance our perspective and remind us of what it is in our favor. Some people like to practice gratitude at specific intervals like daily or monthly, while others practice gratitude when in a low place as a reminder to keep going.

In the Nine to Kind Possibility Planner, there are several places you can write your gratitude list:

• Weekly Notes Pages
• Monthly Layout: Bottom Free Space
• Year At A Glance Section for Each Month
• Weekly Layout: Top 3 Section on Each Day
• Weekly Layout: The Side Priorities Section or Bottom Free Space
• Weekly Layout: Replace the Energy Tracker With Daily 1 Thankful Thing

Whatever or wherever your practice is, the concept is simple. Sit and think of what you are thankful for, then write it down. It can be a major win or an everyday glimmer.

Printed Photos

Hard copy photos make for a fantastic gift (save that for the next celebration or birthday) and your planner can be a great place to keep them! Ordering prints can be from an online service, or you can purchase a photo printer where you print directly from your phone! Analog options like disposable cameras, instax cameras, and digital analog options like CampSnap all give access to screen free photo taking. Printed photos can live on any of the layouts, note pages, or even in between pages like a bookmark!

A Thought A Day

Taking a nod from the “One Line A Day” Journals, writing down one statement summarizing the day or as a check in can be helpful for both taking stock of the present and for documenting the past. The Nine to Kind Daily Notepad offers 5 prompts to help check in, including a prompt of writing your own permission slip. You can transfer any of the answers on your daily notepad to the weekly layouts once you have completed the week.

Monthly Reflections

I will admit, I use the Year at a Glance and weekly layouts the most in my planner, leaving my monthly layouts untouched. Instead of using the monthly layouts to look ahead, it could be a great place to collect memories and reflect on the past month. Using the weekly layouts and note pages, I can transfer things like game scores, feelings, practical reflections (ex: don’t schedule work the day after flying), lessons learned, and more.

Highlighting Major Moments

If you want the most low lift, high impact ways to keep memories using your planner…circle or highlight the major moments of the week. This takes one moment and when you review weeks past, you will have awareness of what you wanted to keep memory wise. For some organization, you can color code them by personal, professional, etc. Note: Highlighting professional wins can be helpful for resume writing, negotiating a raise, writing a biography and more.

Memories, and More Importantly a Reminder to Slow Down

No matter how you choose to document your life, we must remember that we keep track of memories as a way to take stock of what is important to us, and more importantly…remind us of when we need to slow down in the present. Our day to day lives can get so full that they can become a blur. Also there are times in our life where accessing the present might be too hard. Having past memories be a prompt of better times or a reminder of your why can help ease burnout, depression, anxiety and more. Taking the extra moment to glue down, keep track, snap the photo, highlight or write down whatever is important can have immense payoff for our mental health. Instead of having a whole other avenue for those memories, keep them where you operate day to day. Your future self will thank you.

The Nine to Kind Possibility Planner is an undated planning system helping you plan for today and where you want to be in the future. Created by a therapist, the planner is stocked with mindfulness prompts, affirmations, worksheets to help improve your mental health, and more. Take a peek inside HERE!