What to Save (and What to Toss) From Your Kid's School Year
If you've ever stood over a recycling bin holding your kid's math worksheet, silently asking yourself "is THIS a memory?"—you're not alone. We've been there. More times than we'd like to admit.
Here's the thing nobody tells you about school mementos: there's a lot of them, and not all of them are keepers. Somewhere between the 47th stick-figure drawing and the third "certificate of participation," - by the way, what's up with all of those??... it gets genuinely hard to tell what's actually worth saving.
So we made a (very unscientific, very mom-tested) list.
Keep it:
- The first-day-of-school photo. Always. Every year. Even if they're mid-sneeze.
- Report cards. Future-them will find it hilarious (or humbling).
- One piece of art per term that actually looks like them—their handwriting, their weird sense of humour, their favourite colour phase.
- Anything with a teacher's note on it. Those are gold.
- Class photos. You'll forget who was in their class faster than you think.
Let it go:
- Worksheets. All of them. We promise.
- Duplicate drawings of the same rainbow.
- Anything that's already falling apart from being shoved in a backpack for three months.
- The stuff they don't care about. If they shrug at it, you're allowed to shrug too.
The trick isn't saving everything—it's saving the right things, in a place where you'll actually find them again. That's really the whole idea behind the School Memories Book: one page per grade, room for the pieces that matter, and nowhere for the pile of worksheets to hide.
If you're staring down a backpack explosion right now, we see you. You've got this.
Ready to start this year's page? Shop the School Memories Book
— The MaVie Team