A Homemaker’s Guide to Being the Family Historian

Inside: a simple, actionable method to document your family’s memories.

At first, this sorta feels like another job you didn’t sign up for. You’re already making dinner, driving people around, cleaning, and doing laundry. Now this lady is here to tell you that you have ANOTHER job? And it’s being a HISTORIAN? Uh, no thanks.

But stick with me. After all those chicken tenders and baseball practices are long forgotten, the work you do here will live on.

As the keeper of your family’s history, you hold the photos, papers, quotes, and memories. But before we get started, a few points of encouragement. First, you don’t have to catch up. I encourage you NOT to catch up. Today is your first day on the job, and we begin where we are. Second, you don’t have to be “good” at this. Simply attempting to do the job takes you like 95% of the way there. Nothing has to be beautifully organized or artistically done. You have to try to save, remember, and occasionally print. Okay? Okay.

Here’s how to do it.

What to do weekly

This is about 10 minutes of work a week.

Your weekly photo task: picking favorites from your camera roll

The best camera, as they say, is the one you have on you. And for better or worse, that’s our phones. This can be a good thing because you’ll naturally collect lots of photos over time. The bad news is they tend to languish there forever and ever.

So, we need a routine to get them OUT. And your weekly routine is not about doing anything with them like printing. Every week, I want you to heart the ones you like. And remember, ALWAYS, that doing this WELL is not the goal. The pictures don’t have to be good. Do you have ANY pictures of your parents that are well photographed? Probably not. But you are still, I am sure, glad to have them.

Choose a day, like Sunday evening or Monday morning. Then, go through last week’s pictures and heart the ones you like. For bonus points, delete all the weird screenshots.

That’s it. You’re done.

Your weekly paper task: putting keepers in folders

Children (and, to be fair, adults) generate lots of papers. They bring home little stacks from school. Things arrive in the mail. They make artwork and write funny scribbles. And then… the piles begin. What should we do with them? Where do they go?

The answer: about 90% of it is probably trash, and that’s okay. A worksheet, a colored-in coloring page, all that can be thrown away.

But the keepers must be kept, and they need a home.

My answer is to buy a plastic folder for each child and put it in a kitchen drawer. In Sharpie, I write the child’s name and age. For example, in gigantic letters, you would write: HENRY, AGE 9. And every week, the keepers go in that folder, and the rest go in the trash.

What to do monthly

About an hour a month.

The monthly photo task: physical prints

Okay. It’s time to get those little hearted photos into the real world. You’ve made this easy! You handled them quickly each week, and now there’s no wall of screenshots staring back at you.

Sort your album by favorites and look at all those cute faces and memories. Let’s do something with them.

I do NOT recommend a monthly photo book because they are expensive and they are WORK. You open up the photo book site and there are choices, upgrades, layouts, sizes. No thanks. But every single month I do order prints.

As I’ve gotten older, even worrying about mats and frames feels a little annoying. So most months I order plain old prints and let them sort of land where they will. I give some to grandparents; I put some on the fridge; I give some to my kids to put in their rooms or add to bulletin boards. If I have a frame handy or see one I like, sure I’ll insert a photo and hang it up. But the idea is, even if you DON’T have frames or find framing and hanging overwhelming, you STILL get the prints.

And now and then, probably once a quarter, I do a small order from Mixtiles, which makes it easy. The quality is not, like, museum quality, but it’s good enough. They arrive framed with magnetic peel-and-stick backs. I can put them on the walls in just 20 minutes after opening the box. And that feels like a win.

The idea is just to get these images into the physical world, a little at a time.

If you find a cute baby photo in your Shutterfly account from ten years ago, order it and put it somewhere. But remember, do NOT let this turn into a guilt trip about being behind. We start where we are.

The monthly recording task: writing things down

Don’t be alarmed. We’re talking 4-6 sentences per month. Start a new note in your phone called “2026 Notes” or whatever the current year is. No clever titles. Then every month, a little note. “January: 7 inches of snow that melted and turned into solid ice. Couldn’t leave the house for 2 weeks. Henry made the baseball team for this spring; the team is called the Gators. Started planning a trip to Utah; can’t decide between Salt Lake or Zion. We are doing a BIG garden this spring and picked out new tomatoes.”

Sometimes it feels like nothing is happening and this task feels like a real chore. Just write SOMETHING. “February: weather is TERRIBLE. Winter is going on forever. Henry is super bored with coloring and we’ve been going to the mall to walk around. Everyone is SICK!”

You will be glad, glad, glad that you have them. Trust me!

What to do yearly

One afternoon of work per year.

Your album (makes the most sense at the end of the year)

Okay! You’ve been doing small tasks, watching and noting things like good historians. Now we’re pulling it all together. Don’t worry. It’s easy, and you’ve already done the hard part.

Time to order that photo book and make all your annoying decisions on sizes and layouts. BUT! Your photos and captions are already done. Select all your favorite images. Copy your notes into the caption field. Then, arrange them however you want.

If you have special papers in each child’s folder, snap a quick picture of it and add it as a digital file to the album. Totally optional.

And now, look at you. A lovely yearly photo book, all done. Good job.

Your papers

All those collected pieces of art, good report cards, and cute notes deserve a little celebration. Pull out the folder on each child’s birthday and show them all the things they’ve created. They might pretend they don’t want to do this, but they do!

If you forget to do this on a busy birthday week, you can always try again on New Year’s Eve.

If you ever want to go back

I’m putting this last because it tends to overwhelm AND make you feel guilty. All those beautiful baby pictures, lost to the digital wilderness. It’s okay. You had babies, It was hard. But if you DO want to go back, pick one single year to start. Make an album with what you have and what you remember. No guilt allowed.

That’s all

There’s always more you could do. You could interview older relatives. Start a genealogy project. But do those things only if you enjoy them and want to. Simply keeping and documenting your own family’s history is plenty.

This isn’t a project you’ll be done with, and you’ll say “now that task is over!” It’s another invisible job, like laundry and dinner. It will go unnoticed and unthanked until, suddenly, it won’t.