Documenting Life During the Pandemic
Kiera Slye
3 Simple Ways to Start
Ok— so it’s been A MINUTE since we last connected!
2020 happened and we had another baby!
Just like that… life seemed to get crazier and yet more still at the same time! Having a baby during the pandemic is a story in its own right. Adding a second child to the mix two weeks after the world shut down and life as we knew it changed, is a whole other story! How we’ve somehow managed to make it through? Yet another one. Challenges, added anxieties, and magical silver linings fill our daily lives. So many incredible stories to share, but seemingly still no time to document.
However, I have found a few super helpful and simple ways to make documenting life during this momentous time in our history possible. It comes back to finding creative ways to push “pause,” capture some notes about what we're experiencing, and creating a system that makes it easy to pull together something later.
I imagine your family and life dynamic has changed a ton this year too! How cool would it be to be able to share details of what daily life looked like back in the great global pandemic of 2020? Don’t let time and not having a plan get in the way. Get started today using the following tips!
|| Push Pause ||
1 || Use Your Camera Phone to Take Photo and Video Clips
Inventory what is new in your life right now. Create a master list (either in your head) or use the notes app on your phone. Then set out to document short video clips and photos of your life lately.
Here are a few ideas:
Work From Home Setup
Wearing Masks
What your outings look like
Grocery shopping in 2020
Amazon Box pile
Rando House Projects
Pandemic Gardening
Pandemic Playgrounds (in your yard)
Daily Walk Route
Things about every day life you don’t want to forget
Socially Distant Hangout Setups
|| Take Notes ||
2 || Journaling
Give yourself some time to quickly document what is happening in your world right now. I make a habit of going through my camera roll nightly (or weekly) to highlight my favorite images and delete the rest. Every so often, I will select an image and email it to myself, a friend or family member, with a few notes about what is happening in the image/our life lately.
I recently gifted myself the most gorgeous 3 year gratitude journal: The Flecks of Gold journal by 3in30 Takeaways for Moms. It has space for writing a few lines to describe your “Flecks of Gold” moments each day — those tiny moments that bring you joy and light up your soul.
If you don’t feel like you have time for handwriting, try using your phone again and instead of mindlessly scrolling social media, try creating a new note or word document to type down a quick list of things that are new and different in your life.
Here are a few prompts to consider:
Silver linings from the pandemic
How life looked in Feb 2020 v. today
Did you have summer plans or vacation plans that were altered? What did you do instead?
Have you done any new projects at home that you wouldn’t have done but for this pandemic quarantine?
What has been the biggest challenge during the pandemic?
What did you do during quarantine?
Pandemic Bingo… have you heard of it? It’s basically a sarcastic way to tally up how you’ve been affected by the COVID19 Pandemic. A few common squares that come to mind:
WFH (Work From Home)
Joined TikTok
Stock piled Toilet Paper (or ran out!)
Learned to cook
Haven’t worn jeans in 6 months (or is that just me?)
Grew a garden
Aggressively increased your Amazon Bill
Learned to sew (masks)
Social Distance Expert
Had a quarantini
Have you been tested for the Coronavirus? What was that experience like?
Did you or anyone you know contract COVID19?
Things you hope stick around when this virus hopefully ends.
Things you miss about life pre-pandemic
|| Create a System ||
3 || Easy Ways to Save Memories
My favorite system for memory keeping in this time of documenting vs. making final products has been to use Tinybeans as a way to make notes on my favorite images and share them with my family in a daily journal.
The Tinybeans App has made it incredibly easy to capture the moments and share the stories behind them. It has also provided me with an organized and searchable way to review, print, and compile stories in albums later.
This year, I plan to make a yearbook album using Pinhole Press. I’ll be utilizing the search function in Tinybeans to compile a story that is complete with the mega moments I don’t want to forget from 2020. When creating posts in Tinybeans, I’ve been sure to include keywords for 2020 that I’ll use to search in my photo descriptions later (i.e. masks, social distancing, silver linings, milestones, pandemic.)
I still love using Instagram as a way of sharing impactful moments with my followers and it helps to create a “highlight” reel of the mega moments that I am experiencing.
As an efficient way to create tangible products with your memories - you can connect Chatbooks to your Instagram Account to automatically print a photo book with your images and captions every 60 pages.
I am also using Chatbooks to connect to Tinybeans to create larger soft cover books that hold up to 366 images/caption pages to print off more of my favorite every day moments from Tinybeans. The two apps connect now — making it super easy to create a book!
Notes App
I feel like I’ve said it repeatedly, but the Notes App on my phone has become my virtual best friend. I have organized it with several different folders so that I can quickly add notes and images and even video clips to it with stories that I don’t want to forget, but don’t have time to sit down and compile at that given moment.
Examples of folders I have:
Shit my kids say
Milestone Moments
Pushing Pause
Favorite Recipes
Shopping Lists
Don’t forget to do
(1SE) One Second Every Day App
I have been making it a habit to take short 5-10s video clips horizontally filmed using my iPhone on a daily (or at a min. weekly basis). I try to capture the time, place, moment and feel for what is happening in life on that given day so that when I go and compile my video story, there is ample content. I wish I could say that I keep up with making monthly videos every month… but I don’t. I do however regularly try to make sure to film so that one day I can. Luckily the 1SE app makes it super easy to make fun films using your photo and video content whenever you’re ready!
Ok - that’s it for today! Hope this gives you some motivation and a few ways to just get started today! Comment below and let me know what you plan to document! I’d love to hear it!