Ways to Organize Memorabilia

We all have memorabilia of some sort; These are collections or objects that remind us of important people or events in our lives.

Does This Item Spark Joy? 

1. Lay all your items or like you did with other collections.
2. Look at each item and ask if it sparks joy or makes you happy. Does it remind you of a certain event or person? Does it give you happy memories?
3. If there are items you no longer want, see if you can hand these down to someone else. If it is from a collection, put them on eBay or trade them so you get a return on their worth.
4. Keep track of items you have if you want to stay on top of your collection. I like using a spreadsheet to write all items in a collecting. Using a tool like Airtable is a good idea. For photos, keep backups of old photos by scanning them digitally.
5. Display your items. Memorabilia can be great to display. Photos can be put in scrapbooks. Collections can be displayed creatively.

What Collections Do You Keep? 

One collection that is important to me is a glass frog collection from my grandmother. I like to display it on a shelf, but I could find a better way to display it. The glass frogs were originally in a glass case which is a nice way to keep them protected. Right now, the glass frogs sit on a glass lily pad. I am not sure if the glass lily pad was my grandmother’s, but it works perfectly for the glass frogs and helps give the collection a story.

Some other things I collect include autographed items and ticket stubs. I will do a longer blog post with my collections.

How do you store your memorabilia? 

How to Organize Your Makeup Vanity

Love your makeup? Take care of your beauty products by keeping them organized. You can keep makeup organized in the bathroom or bedroom. Here are some ideas to get your beauty collection organized.

Get Rid of Outdated Makeup

Get rid of makeup that is old or expired. Like with other organization, take all your makeup out of its drawers and lay it out to go through each item individually. Ask if you love each item. I like this method by LearnVest that organizes makeup in to five categories:

1. Special occasion items – These are items you only use for special events, like huge false eyelashes or bold colored eye shadows you only wear on Halloween.
2. Items you use everyday – I have a section on my counter where I keep just the makeup I wear on an everyday basis. This includes foundation, powder and lipgloss. I can put it on quickly without looking through tons of products.
3. Things you never use – This is your toss pile. Get rid of these items. You can swap them if they are not expired or sell them if they are still in their package.
4. Things you might use more if … This is for items you have been meaning to try, but never got around to. Did get a nice makeup palette you always wanted as a gift, but never really used it? Leave these in a separate pile for now.
5. Duplicates – Use this pile for items you have more than one of. Maybe our have two bottles of your favorite moisturizer because you always stock up on it.

What Do You Love?

As you go through your piles, you will get a sense of what you love and what you don’t. Figure out your style and what kind of makeup you should or shouldn’t buy in the future. If you never wear blue eyeliner, don’t buy it again. Did you buy it just because it was on sale or in trend? Avoid buying items just for trends in the future. Is there a brand you always love the makeup of? Look for deals and discounts from this brand in the future.

Set Up a Vanity
When you organize your space, you can set the makeup depending on the piles. Everyday makeup should be in the easiest place to reach. Special occasion items should go in one spot. For items you might use more of, try them out for a month and see if you really like them. Otherwise, don’t buy them again. Duplicates can be stored out of immediate view so you have a backup.

The bathroom or bedroom are good places to store makeup. I love vanity tables. See my blog post on vanity inspiration here.

What are your best makeup organization tips? Let me know in the comments or use hashtag #mythreadofthought with your favorite makeup products.

Creating a Capsule Wardrobe Using Seasonal Color Analysis

Have you heard of seasonal color analysis? Seasonal color analysis helps you find the right colors for your skins tone and coloring. You can take a free seasonal color analysis quiz here. 

You fit in to one category with the seasonal color analysis quiz – summer, autumn, winter or spring. I am an autumn or a deep autumn. I am not sure of my skin tone because it is in between warm and cool, but my dark eyes and hair make me an autumn. These are some colors that are supposed to look good on me. 

Knowing your colors can help keep your clothes more organized and style more consistent by only buying clothes you know look good on you. Do you know what season you are? Let me know in the comments.

Ways to Organize Clothing

What are some ways to organize clothing? It is essential to keep your clothing organized. Just by cleaning out your closet, you can help figure out your personal style and what you love.

Get rid of the unnessecary.

Outdated clothes? Clothes that have holes? Jeans that don’t fit? Toss them out! I recommend emptying your closet and making piles of clothes you no longer want, clothes you want to keep and clothes you aren’t sure of.

Use the handy infographic above I found on Pinterest to decide what to keep and what to toss.

Take care of what you love.

The capsule wardrobe theory recommends keeping 37 items you love. This doesn’t always mean keeping expensive items, but you should choose clothes that are high quality and you wear every day.

Take care of clothing you have so it lasts longer. I like this laundry chart above. Make sure to read instructions for washing clothes so they don’t wear out quickly. If you have items that have imperfections or missing pieces, fix them.

Give the items you keep a home.

Now, it is time to put all your clothing back. It can be a lot of fun to arrange your closet and clothing. Try color coordinating hangers by assigning different types of clothing a different color or arranging by season. I like to arrange my clothes by color in my closet or arrange items from light to dark.

In the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, the author recommends folding clothes and storing them vertically. You don’t have to do this, but I find some items benefit from folding while others work on a hanger. I keep clothes I wear for working out or sleeping in folded in a drawer while clothes I wear go in my closet on a hanger.

Accessories can be arranged using creative methods. Shoes can be arranged in shoe boxes with a photo of the shoe on the outside. Boots can be kept in shape by putting rolled up magazines inside them when not in use. If you have multiple scarves, hang them on a hanger.

In the next entry, I will talk about how I am personally trying to organize my clothing.

What are your tips for organizing clothes? Let me know in the comments or even use hashtag #mythreadofthought with photos.

How to Edit Old Photos

How do you organize your old photos? If you have old photos laying around, this tutorial will show you how to scan and edit old photos on your computer or phone to make them look new. Let’s get started editing!

Supplies:

• Old Photos: Start with one photo to test it out. I am using an example of a photo from my childhood.

• Scanner: A scanner is the best way to upload film photos on to a computer. I have also used a camera and phone camera to take photos of old pictures and they turned out fine. The quality might not be as good though

• Compressed Air: This is used to remove dirt and dust from photos without touching them.

• Photo Editing Program: You will need scanning software that comes with your scanner to scan your photo. You will also need a photo editing program. My favorite photo editor is l Adobe Photoshop on the computer.I also used A Color Story and A Beautiful was for this tutorial since I did the editing on my phone. You can really use any photo editing program once you have scanned your photo and converted it to a JPG.

Instructions:

1. First, clean your photo before scanning it. Get rid of any dust or dirt using compressed air. Also clean your scanner by wiping the scanner bed with a dry or slightly damp cloth.

2. Use your scanner or camera to scan photos. Scan in color when you can. According to PC Mag, you should save at 600dpi in TIFF format and then save a copy in lower resolution or JPG format later or if you want to post it on the web.

3. Save your photo in a folder on your computer. Keep your photos organized by date or topic. I like Adobe Bridge to keep photos organized. Open up a copy of your photo in a photo editing program like Adobe Photoshop. Resize your photo. I like to resize mine to about 1000 pixels on the largest side, but you can do what works for you. Rotate the photo so it is upright and crop it so you get rid of unnecessary white space from scanning it. You can always crop it more later to make the photo look better. You can save this copy as a JPG.

4. Now comes the fun editing. I switched over to the A Color Story on my phone to do most of my editing. The first thing I like to do is crop the photo more and adjust brightness and contrast. You can also play with curves and levels to get the look you want. You need see I am adjusting the curves here. Also, sharpen the photo if it is too blurry.

5. At this point, I like to add fun stuff like filters and color. I love the bright filters in A Color Story, but since this photo was already bright, I used a darker color filter called Magic Hour.

Here is how it came out. The color isnt’t perfect, but I like how I edited the photo make it clearer and ready for future projects.

6. As a finishing touch, you can add fun details like text and embellishments. I did this in the A Beautiful Mess app. These are good for scrapbooking.

Just for fun, I also edited another copy of the photo in black and white. Let me know which one you like better.

How do you edit old photographs?