3 Easy Steps to Write Your Family Story When You Don’t Have Time

Your family history is unique and your story is worth telling. But how do you do it in a busy world filled with the demands of jobs and families?

Here’s a system you can set up and use for 10 to 15 minutes a day. But let’s first highlight what it means to write your family’s story.

Brief chronicles of your photos, videos and other meaningful memories are the best way to begin writing your family’s history and story when you’re pressed for time.

I’ve been a photo coach for nearly 30 years and I developed a method during those early years to help my clients journal their stories by asking questions like a journalist—the basic 5 Ws and How:

Who
What
Where
Why
When
How

In years past, stories could be jotted down next to the photos in traditional scrapbook albums.

Photo by Don Simkovich

Today, it’s easier than ever to write your family’s story with brief notes online. As you compile a brief sentence or a few sentences, writing will get easier because your mind will be focused on the task. This lays a good foundation if you plan on writing a lengthier memoir or chronicle to share with other family members and friends.

Add some fun to it as well. Check the Events page on my website and join others during virtual events who are writing their own stories, too.

The good news is the online platform I use, FOREVER®, is a permanent solution to store your memories from decades ago and place them alongside the ones you’ll create in the future.

Step 1 – Gather Everything in One Place

My business today makes use of FOREVER®, a complete memory-keeping system where you digitize all your old media files and gather them in one place.

Yes, you can bring old slideshows, 8mm home movies, VHS tapes, and all of your printed photos into the same safe and secure area that you use to upload the media on your smartphone.

The most meaningful memories of yesterday will be alongside the memories you and your children—and grandchildren—will create tomorrow.

Black and white photo of children going to church Easter Sunday 1964

Me, Melody, with my siblings before church on Easter Sunday, 1964

Step 2—Create Albums and Sub-Albums

My parents’ family photos organized in their FOREVER account

In the FOREVER® platform, it’s easy to create main albums and sub-albums. You could create one titled “Family History.” Within that, you could create one with your history and the history of your spouse like “Johnson Family History” and “Smith Family History.”

This is a screenshot from my parents’ main album.

You could have an album titled “Family Travels” and document the trips your family has taken from the time your children were little to your time traveling without them as empty nesters.

Since the albums are digital, you can place a photo in more than one album. If you have a photo of your great-grandparents traveling in a car from, say the 1920s, you can have that next to your cross-over vehicle or Sprinter camper van.

Step 3—Write Brief Descriptions

You can write brief descriptions in the albums or write longer paragraphs filled with meaningful words. You can even type descriptions or talk to text the story behind the digital file and it will be attached to it. This is called the metadata. Use the above journaling questions to guide you in knowing what to write.

This is view of my friend and colleague Cindy Marks, featured in How to Use Your Photos in Writing Your Family’s Story.

The FOREVER digital album makes storing photos convenient and safe

I suggest you describe in a few sentences why this photo is important to you—and why someone in the next 100 or more years should care about it. What can they learn about the time period that the photo was taken in?

Why not try it out with 2 free GB of storage space?

Read on to learn about the benefits of FOREVER®.

Benefits of Using FOREVER®

It’s permanent storage in a safe and secure space you own, guaranteed—for a lifetime plus 100 years and longer. FOREVER® is a forward-looking company where users own the space where all their media files are stored.

When technology changes, and we know it will, there will be no cost to you or your family, or future generations, for the migration of your content to new digital formats.

Also, you don’t have to worry about being locked out of their account because the Terms of Service have changed.

Your information is never sold for advertising or data mining purposes.

In addition to digitizing your files, it truly is permanent storage.

Other benefits include:

Researching your family line using FOREVER®’s professional researcher if you need a consultation or assistance
Using an app on your phone to easily snap and upload still images or videos
Offering streaming video
Making photo books from the photos in your albums