Someday you’ll miss the loud house and the fights over the bathroom. Store the memories while they’re still happening.

The daily noise of living with other people tends to feel like an obstacle while it is happening. Later it turns out that the crowding and the waiting and the arguing over small things were also the sound of people being close by. Memory does not record on its own; it keeps whatever you were actually paying attention to. Most of what you will want back was never photographed because it seemed too ordinary.

Stay at the table five extra minutes one night this week. Take a picture of something completely unremarkable, like the kitchen at dinner. You are not being sentimental, you are saving a file.