Ever wanted to find a keepsake, like that award winning essay your child wrote in 5th grade that you kept? Know where to find it? You will once you organize all your keepsakes in one location.
Creating memory boxes
You will need: 1 small plastic storage bin for each member of the household. I prefer a memory box that is plastic so it is waterproof.
Personally I use Rubbermaid's small tubs so it doesn’t get too heavy but is big enough to handle larger papers. You will need one for each member of your household.
Label the box on the side with the person’s name and the start date of the items you are placing inside. Find a spot in each person’s closet on a top shelf that you can store the box, or store them all in one location if you have space.
If you have kids, you know how much paper you can end up wanting to keep and not knowing what to do with it.
So...what do you do with it? Report cards, drawings, special mementoes from trips, yearbooks etc. Throughout the year I put all their papers I want to keep in their “KEEP” file in the filing cabinet. If it is special artwork that won’t fit, I just place it directly into their memory box.
At the end each year, I verify that I want to keep all the contents of each family member's KEEP folder and place the contents into their memory box.
Parents tend to go a bit wild wanting to keep EVERYTHING in the early years. Once the year is over, you might want to pick only the very best things to save out of the KEEP file. Believe it or not, I actually had to come up with my son’s past years’ academic award certificates for entry into a school club one year. The memory box saved me a lot of digging around for the certificates.
You never know when you might need to pull out an old memory, report card, or award certificate. When the box is full, simply add the ending year onto the label and start a new box. My own memory box contains cards I want to keep, awards I have received, travel mementos, etc. Anything special you want to hold on to goes in the box, but try to be picky and save only the really special things.
These are the 10 Gallon Containers I prefer.
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