I Asked a Pro Organizer How to Organize My Old Journals, and Her Advice Was So Thoughtful

Would you be surprised to learn that when I was a child I was a journaler? Well, I was — and, yes, I did grow up to be a journalist. Recently I cracked open the box that held these childhood journals and was delighted by how fun they were to read. There are cut-out pictures from magazines and funny stories I wrote as a kid. The pages are littered with quotes from musicals I was a part of at camp, and little scenes I thought up (hinting at my future love of playwriting). And my kids like reading them with me, too. 

As wonderful as it was to flip through the pages and go down memory lane, the excess use of neon gel pens had made some stories difficult to read. I’ve since switched to typing out my journals instead, but I didn’t want to part with any of these written ones for the memories they contained. 

I asked pro organizer Jean Prominski of Sparkle Home Organizing for her advice on getting these sentimental items organized, and I embarked on a long journey of organization and self-discovery.

Prominski and I decided that a bookshelf in the living room wasn’t the right location for these somewhat-private artifacts. She’d previously helped me tame my chaotic closet, and I still loved her ideas, but I noticed the organization of the craft supplies here, while tidy, didn’t make them very accessible to my kids. I decided to relocate all the craft supplies to the lower shelves in my living room bookshelf to store my journals on those closet shelves instead.

It was also a good opportunity to audit both the craft supplies and the picture books so I could make room. I made a donation pile for the school used-book fair and had some crafty materials we don’t use to offer up to my son’s teacher.  

Once I had a rack of clean shelves, I started laying out some journals and panicked. These deep shelves were going to be seriously underutilized. Prominski suggested putting the journals in bins so I could access them quickly and easily and use the depth of the shelves. None of my bins were quite perfect for drawer-like storage, where I could pull the bin straight out and choose from them like from a card catalogue, but it’s easy enough to turn each bin and select from there. 

Prominski recommended that the bins be labeled with the timeframe contained therein. For example, the bottom bin has my early work (‘93-’96) while others are dedicated to high school and college, when my journaling volume decreased in favor of writing long school essays. I’ll admit that I still don’t own a label maker — it’s on my shopping list — but you could also label with a piece of painter’s tape and a permanent marker.

I was so deeply invigorated by the clean space that I decided to keep up the organizing momentum with other sentimental items. I gathered up my Playbills and put them in an album, and then scooped up all the DVDs my dad made of school plays and family vacations, organized them by date, and put them in a nicer box. My boxes of letters and cards from over the years above the journals means I have all of my handwritten, very special childhood memories accessible. 

Now that they’re organized, I have found some real gems among my journals. One of my childhood best friends was visiting and we were trying to remember a place we stayed in Italy. Sure enough, young Laura had mentioned the name of the place in her travel journal. I am looking forward to seeing what other treasures I dig up.