"I'm 11 years behind," a colleague moaned the other day. Unfortunately for me, I can beat that.

I haven't stuck any photographs in albums since 1992. Not one.

Before that I was quite meticulous and would spend hours sitting at our living room table with the necessary equipment to one side - photos, corner mounts, cutting mat and knife, and of course albums, proper old-fashioned ones.

No peel-back plastic books for me. Like my parents, I love those large, leather-bound albums with tough dark pages and delicate protector sheets in between.

I used to watch my dad as he placed our family photos in albums like this, neatly annotating them as he went along.

How he found the time, with three children and a demanding job, I'll never know. But at least in those days we only ever seemed to get through one film every holiday.

Nowadays we buy huge multi-packs and snap our way through hundreds - the photos from which invariably end up, like ours, in carrier bags at the back of a cupboard.

I hate the idea that images of special events such as the birth (not the messy bits, you understand) of our daughters, their birthday parties and our lovely summer holidays languish at the bottom of half-a-dozen Tesco bags.

Then you have the added nightmare of having to spend hours searching for photographs that could be in any one of a thousand packets.

This happened to me at the weekend, when a friend called with her eight-year-old son who was a toddler when she last visited.

"I'll just find those photos of little Paul," I said, "I'll just be a sec'," before disappearing for a good half-hour only to reappear empty-handed, admitting defeat.

"Sorry, I know they're there, but I can't find them," I whined.

I suppose I'm lucky in that they are mostly in the right packets. Some people have years and years all thrown together in one bag or box - what a nightmare task sorting those would be.

I should love to be able to immerse myself in the incredibly therapeutic job of organising all our snaps.

I made firm plans to tackle it while on two lots of maternity leave, but as all parents know, new babies and adult plans don't mix.

When I went part-time, I thought "Great, once the children are at school I can get cracking."

But it is such a time-consuming task, and in everyday life there are many more vastly time-consuming tasks that command a far greater priority that arranging photographs in albums.

I worry about not getting around to it until our children have left home.

It would be such a sad affair sorting through pictures of them having fun in their dressing-up clothes, yet not having them around to share the happy memories (or run off with the photocorners).

I have made a pledge to start within the next couple of years. I happened to mention this to my dad, thinking he would raise an eyebrow.

But he too, has lost his way somewhere along the line. "Don't remind me - I'm at least 20 years behind with ours," he said.

Updated: 09:36 Tuesday, May 11, 2004