How To Curate Meaningful Memories Of Your Child

Create a vault of detailed recollections for you, and your child, to look back on.

I’m a little embarrassed to say this, but at the time of writing this I have 21,170 photos and 5,383 videos on my iPhone. I’d hedge a bet that 75% of them are of my daughter, and she’s only two years old. 

At this point, every time I take a new photo or video, I get a notification saying my iPhone storage is full (despite paying for additional cloud storage) — so over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to delete some.

I won’t lie — doing this has been really hard! I want to save every single one of these memories and have them available to me at all times, but I know it’s just not practical. 

There have been numerous things I’ve tried to do in the sake of “curating” photos — the most obvious one being a printed photo album.

But what I really want to remember are the stories behind the photos — and I want to remember them in just as much detail as the 4K video on my phone. And it’s hard to do that in a printed album. 

The pros and cons of memory apps

Now, I know that there are some solutions on the market for this — including Queepsake, an app that texts you every day with a question about your child. You can respond with a short message, along with a photo — and at any point you want, you can have all of your responses turned into an album.

It’s great — and I love that technology exists to help us deal with the effects of, well, technology. I’ve subscribed to Queepsake since Gigi was an infant, but there are a couple of things  that have prevented me from being an avid user of the app.

One, I want to provide thoughtful, meaningful responses — but I’m often too busy to spend the time crafting something every night, especially over a text message. 

By the time I think of what I want to say, it’s often the next day, when another text message question has already hit my inbox. I almost feel like I fall behind, even though nobody is keeping track.

And two, I question whether or not I really want to pay for this service throughout the entirety of Gigi’s childhood. Maybe I would, but I’m not sure.

The simplest way to curate meaningful memories of your child

I came across an incredibly simple way to save, and curate, your child’s memories (or the memories or your niece, nephew, godchild, etc.). All it entails is creating an email address for them and periodically emailing them with the memories you want to remember in detail at a time that works for you. 

It essentially serves as a vault of detailed recollections, a window into their life that they likely won’t remember. And here’s the best part: You can give them the login information as a gift for their eighteenth birthday (or whenever you feel is an appropriate time). 

Today, I created an email address for my Gigi girl and I’m so excited to send her an email. There have been a number of things I’ve been filing away in my mind that I know I’ll want to share with her one day — and this gives me a really special way to do it.