A shoebox of kid crafts

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We have a storeroom in our basement.

One shelf in particular makes me laugh and ache with sadness at the same time.

The plastic bins full of kid crafts.

When our oldest daughter was a toddler, she constantly created artwork. At home, at preschool, it was an endless stream of scribbles, finger paintings, and macaroni art.

We saved everything.

(To be fair, she was and is very artistically gifted.)

The shoebox turned into 4 shoeboxes, then a large plastic bin, then 2 more.

Artwork, papers from school… a scattered pile of objects telling the story of her life.

When our second was born, we began his shoebox as well.

But when our third was born...

Something broke.

Or at least changed.

Some of the macaroni art was quickly filed in the … gasp …trash can.

An invisible filter had formed between anything the kids created or brought home and the “archive.”

You see, my wife and I had realized that archival without organization or cataloging was not a blessing.

It was a curse.

We had participated in the “going through of things” after the passing of a family member…

We had realized that an Apple photo library filled with tens of thousands of photos was more overwhelming than satisfying…

And after catching a few of those “hoarder” shows on tv, realized that we never wanted to place undue value on mere things, no matter their origin.

Whether physical or digital, the unbridled collection and hoarding of “things” would eventually suffocate you under their weight.

Today, our storeroom is pretty lopsided.

Each kid has their own large plastic bin.

7 in all.

Our oldest’s bin is filled to the top.

Our second’s is about halfway full.

And our third through seventh have a smattering of their “greatest hits" tucked away, with plenty of room left over.

I sometimes look at these and wonder if we didn’t save enough.

Sometimes, I think we saved too much.

And annoyingly, this same problem stares me in the face whenever I am looking for something I wrote last month, or trying to link to a podcast I was on last year, or looking for a screenshot I grabbed last week.

Is it in my local downloads folder? Maybe I moved it to my Google Drive.

Or maybe it’s in DropBox, which I cancelled last year.

And what about some of my banger posts on Facebook from 2021?

The dozens of guest appearances I’ve done on podcasts?

Even the emails I’ve written but did not publish to the web?

Archival without organization or cataloging is not a blessing.

It’s a curse.

If you are a content creator of any sort, you must have a way to store your work in a way that is searchable and accessible when needed.

Scattered shoeboxes, Dropboxes, Google drives, blog sites, email software, occasional guest articles and podcast appearances, not to mention the social media posts…

This is NOT the Way.

Especially if a well-timed retrieval could save you time through repurposing, make you money through productization, or increase your clout in a curated portfolio.

Now, there’s a convenient digital shoebox with an array of features to help you do exactly this.

You can organize everything you create in one place, no matter the source.

I’m talking blog posts,

social media posts (both text and video),

podcast appearances,

guest articles,

Substack,

emails,

All nicely cataloged for your convenience.

Plus some added features like social media analytics, a self-updating portfolio page, curated collections of work, all safely archived in the cloud.

I’m talking about Authory, a new, powerful and affordable solution for organizing your professional digital life.They have a free trial, then the cost is between $12 and $24 per month depending on the features you choose and whether you pay monthly or annually.

(All the features I mentioned are available for the $12 plan, the higher tier plan also includes more automation and API support.)

If you create content and need to keep track of everything in one place, this is the best way to do it.

Check them out here:

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That’s all for today,

Greg