What size photo album do you like?

I'm "done" with scrapbooking because I don't have the energy/creativity to do more of it. I'm a perfectionist and hate not having the "right" tone of coordinating paper to embellish a page, and having to drive all the way to Michaels just to spend 50 cents to find the right paper. The other way, of course, is just buy a bunch of paper and have it around, but even then, it'll probably be off in tone, and then I hate having all the paper sitting around not doing anything.

I'm not into the project life concept either. Plus, I don't like the idea of having to have the right oriented pictures, and if I don't, dealing with filling up the other spaces.

OK, heard you on the magnetic. I want to do that "old fashioned" look with the photo corners, so now I'm stuck with the fact that adding a white then black border around the picture really grows it and makes fitting two 4x6's side by side in landscape will be impossible. Maybe I just need to print out everything in 3x5?

I think I'm going to stick with a 12x12 format - dropped by the store today and do just think that if I "ever" had the inspiration for doing a page, it would suck to not have the format to do it. Plus, I'm sure at some point, my daughter will pick it up and want to do it for a summer project or whatever.

Expanding on what was previously posted....I would be careful about going much bigger than 12x12. It can be awkward to hold on a lap and turn pages.

I want to second the project life or for that matter do the We R memories protectors and get the fuse tool so you can do any size anywhere on the page.

I have seen first hand the damage the magnetic albums do to pictures. That is even stored in a cool dark closet and still tons of damage and loos.

I am linking a few things to help give a visual.....

Please please please do not use traditional magnetic photo albums!

I have always used 12 by 12. They are big but not unwieldy. You could do it project life style with occasional white space and journaling but still ample room for multiple photos.

Why are you done scrapbooking?

I have a couple of 12 x 12 scrapbooks that I made to cover my wedding and the 1st year for each of my 2 kids. I have to confess that I"m done "scrapbooking" for the most part! Here after, I just want to print out pictures and throw them in a magnetic photo album for each year and be done with it!

I'd like all my photo albums/scrapbooks to be consistent sizes (I'm kind of an organization/clutter freak), but would be willing to change size of my photo albums going forward since I only have the 3 12x12 albums.

If I print out pics in 4x6, Im wondering if I'll find a 12x12 too limiting in that I can only put 2 landscape pictures side by side, with no white space. But then maybe you really don't do that and just stagger them?

I saw a Pioneer photo album that was 12x16 (I think), and I'm thinking that might be nice because then you have some white space around your pictures, right? (I think a good majority of my pictures are going to be landscape, though with iPhones these days...)

I also plan to put my kids school class and team pictures in them, and those are usually 8x10s.

I have tons of pics from before marriage of course, and in all different size formats, but I'm not factoring those in the decision.

I hope to go with plain black cover, as I want to have the same cover whether it's the album I'm buying today, or 20 years from now (as I said, I'm a clutter freak)

Thanks for your input!