“We think we’ll remember everything, and of course we don’t,” says craft expert Carol Duvall, the host of HGTV’s The Carol Duvall Show. A simple way to keep track of your life is by jotting down notes in a daily calendar. “Instead of just writing, ‘American Airlines flight,’ write where you’re going and why,” says Duvall, who has kept all of her calendars since 1988. Beyond information, keeping mementos is a perfect way to capture the local barbershop before it goes out of business, a special meal, or a vacation. “A shell, a leaf, even a goofy souvenir, can act as a memory trigger,” says Duvall. A scrapbook is the obvious vessel for mementos, but “not everybody has the time or inclination,” says Connie Sheerin, author of Memory Keepsakes: 43 Projects for Creating and Saving Cherished Memories (Thunder Bay Press, $20 on www.amazon.com). Her recommendations for expanding a memory-keeping repertoire include making a pillow out of Grandfather’s ties and saving locks of hair in a shadowbox frame.

Other ideas: Have baby shoes bronzed; make a computerized photo album with digital photos, music, and little write-ups about an event and post it on your personal website or e-mail it to friends and family; preserve bouquets by trimming off the stems, submerging the heads in silica (found in most craft stores), and leaving them for a week or two. Or, Duvall suggests, make a time capsule: Fill a waterproof container with mementos from each family member (a photo, a letter, a favorite toy) sealed in a Ziploc bag and bury it in the backyard, then write yourself a note about where it is and when — in 10 years, perhaps? — to dig it up. Preserving memories isn’t just for your own future enjoyment, says Sheerin: “It gives the people who come after you a sense of what your life and times were like and what was important to you.”