The Memory Jar

Happy New Year everyone! 2016 was quite a year and there were plenty of ups and downs. Hopefully 2017 will be a better year. Something cool my family did last year was create a memory jar. My sister and I found just a regular, old jar lying around our house and then decorated it, and as the year progressed, we put all kinds of memories in it.

If you want to create your own memory jar, as mentioned above, all you need is:

  • A jar (a larger one will work better)
  • A bunch of small pieces of paper or sticky notes
  • Half of a piece of 8×11 piece of paper cut hotdog style (this is for the outside of your jar)
  • Markers or sharpies to decorate your jar
  • A pen or special marker or even pencil for writing on the slips of paper

Here’s a few tips for your memory jar:

  • Follow through! Actually keep the memory jar going the entire year. My sister did a really good job of keeping our memory jar in order and made sure that memorable events made it into the memory jar.
  • Persuade everyone in your family to add to the jar. It’s more fun when it’s more than one person adding to the jar.
  • Write the month or even day the memory occurred so when you go back and look at all of them, you remember when they happened.
  • Be detailed with your writing so when you go back, you can actually recall them.
  • Add pictures, movie tickets, maps, and other little memorabilias.
  • Don’t open the jar to look at memories until the end of the year!
  • On New Year’s Eve open your memory jar with your family and share everything that happened over the year.

My family did a memory jar for the first time this past year and I could definitely say it’s going to be a New Year’s tradition from now on. I hope you all had a safe, fun night and cheers to 2017! 🙂

The Memory Jar