One of the biggest complaints/excuses out there about why people choose not to scrapbook is that they just don’t have the time.

There’s this perception that scrapbooking and memory keeping in general takes this huge amount of time out of your day. I’ve never found that to be the case, but that may be due to the way I approach the whole concept.

Making a scrapbook page doesn’t mean you have to have all your photos printed and organized first, nor do you have to make your page extremely artistic or even tightly designed.

Nor do you have to do ten pages about one event, or even tell the story in chronological order.

Scrapbooking is so much simpler than that.

It is one story, and a piece of paper to write it on, plus a picture or two or three to illustrate your story. That’s it. Everything else is bells and whistles.

You don’t even need paper. A status update on Facebook, like this one I put up yesterday is totally scrapbooking. It’s just a digital version.

Now, I’m not recommending that you never put anything on paper. In fact, at the rate in which technology changes and gets damaged, having only digital records would be a recipe for lots of lost memories.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s not useful. Especially if you use it as a temporary warehouse for memories, for when you have five minutes to document your story in a more lasting manner.

So that’s one way for you to capture memories quickly and easily. You’re even probably already doing that.

How about a couple other quick ways to document your life before we finish for today?

Next up? An old school organizing tool–your calendar or agenda. Yep. That pile of paper hanging on your wall or tucked into your purse. That is a great, quick scrapbooking tool.

Simply write down memorable things someone said or did in the relevant square, and you’ve done some scrapbooking. Really! It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Last up– journaling cards that are designed for pocket pages. This is the latest trend that has been sweeping the scrapbooking world– it’s been going on for a few years now, and shows every sign of expanding and really and truly altering the way people save their memories.

It’s a simple concept–write a few notes about a day or an event, and pair it with a few photos, and you’re done. You can add artistic elements if you so desire, but the important thing is saving those memories.

The cards are about the same size as a playing card, so are really easy to slip into a pocket or purse to have handy when you just have to capture the latest goofy thing you heard. (Around here, we concentrate on goofy and silly, in case you were wondering.)

That’s all you really need to start scrapbooking. Really.

A memory, and a place to store it. It doesn’t matter if it’s digital, or paper, it’s still a memory worth saving, and it doesn’t take very much time at all. You can definitely squeeze it into your busy schedule.

You were going to post that adorable cat/kid/spouse photo anyway, weren’t you?