At what point is spending hours on something to make a project more time efficient, not time efficient?

Huh?

Digital Scrapbooking.  If you don’t use Storybook Creator software then this probably all sounds like jibberish, so you can stop reading if you want.   But if you DO use Storybook Creator software, then you’ll probably relate and maybe this will help you with your stuff, too!

Here goes…

I use the Creative Memories Storybook Creator Plus software and I LOVE it.  What I really like is how I can import non-Creative Memories papers and embellishments into the program to use on my digital creations.  “Stuff to Scrap” has some fabulous digital kits that sell for $2.00 on Tuesdays, or no more than $5.99 the rest of the week. 

Creative Memories Content Kits start at $4.95 and go up to $15.99 for a CD. 

The plus of using Creative Memories is that everything coordinates, nothing is duplicated, and I believe the packages take up less space on the hard-drive. 

The benefit of Stuff to Scrap (STS) packages is that you can customize them (delete papers and embellishments that you won’t use), rename them, and organize them to suit your needs.  However, there’s a lot of similar content between packages and the files are huge, taking up a lot of space on my hard drive.

Here’s where my original question comes into play.  When I’m building my scrapbook pages, I have to scroll through oodles and oodles of “packages” and when I find the right package, I have to look through all the content within that package to find the paper or embellishment that I’m looking for.  Along the way I pass things I know I will never use. 

The first issue I have is that I can’t modify a Creative Memories package, but I do know I can modify a Stuff to Scrap package.  The benefit of deleting the stuff I will never use is that it would no longer clutter my list of papers and embellishments and save me some time building pages.  But is that worth the (estimating) 2 hours that I need to simply go through and delete stuff?

Another defficiency- having to pass over the Disney or Christmas content each time….so maybe I should move those “specialty” packages to another folder?  Storybook Creator defaults with 2 organization methods:  My Stuff and Commercial Content.  I just learned today that I can add additional folders to that tree.

Ideally, I should have:

-Commercial Content (CM licensed materials)
– My Stuff- Holidays
– My Stuff- Disney
– My Stuff- Sports
– My Stuff- (?)

To organize my packages that way would be much simpler, and eliminate most of the stuff I know I won’t need for a basic page. But again, I can’t move or modify the Creative Memories packages, so I’ll only be half organized.  And it will take a lot of time.

Another thing I can do is tag my content.  If I know I want blue paper- I can do a search for blue paper and see everything I have in one spot.  Problem is none of my stuff is tagged. So I would need to spend a few hours tagging content.

See my dilemma?  Is it worth it to spend hours of time organizing something so that you spend a few seconds less each time you click on the content box to change papers or embellishments?

Or how much time I spent writing this when I could have been doing that (tagging, or creating folders, or deleting content!)

Truly another time Elisa’s Rambling….

(My decision: creating more “My Stuff” folders to move the content that I know I skip over frequently.  I’m even going to make a “My Favorites” folder to hold my most frequently used items!!)