School Year Memory Boxes

If you are looking for a great way to store all those special drawings, perfect little handprint art pieces and those awesome reports your small person wrote, these school year memory boxes are for you! Printable keepsake memory sheets to place on files folders for all the different school years in a plastic sealed bin!

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Paper clutter is my arch-nemesis. Anyone with school-aged kids knows how much paper comes home with them! So. Much. However there are certain things from the school year that I do want to hang onto and these pieces get put in a pile, that gets moved to another pile that eventually gets put in a closet and then forgotten about.

Now multiply that x3 for me and you have yourself a giant ole’ pile of paper mess. The three separate piles merge to one and sometimes it’s hard for me to even remember which kid that piece came from! (I know, awesome mom here!) So let’s combat that, shall we?

School Memory Bin Supplies

• Plastic Legal Sized hanging folder bins
• Legal Sized hanging folders (I assigned each kid a color)
• Printable Keepsake Memory Printables (see below)
• Home Printer
• White copy paper or white cardstock
• Glue Stick or Tape Runner

For the hanging folders, I let each child choose a color. You could also do them in a rainbow of multiple colors! You know I love rainbow!

Optional School Memory Bin Personalization Supplies

• Electronic Cutting Machine such as a Cricut or Silhouette
• Adhesive Vinyl
• Transfer Tape
• Weeding Hook
• Scraper
• Dry Erase Marker (extra are great for school supply lists!)
• Ruler

Notes about School Memory Bin

• The Printable pack has Birth, 1st & 2nd years, Preschool, Pre-kindergarten, and then Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade. I also added years 3 and 4 if your small person doesn’t attend preschool and also year 5 for those littles who do not start kindergarten until they are 6 years old. I also added in Freshman, Sophomore, Junior & Senior nomenclatures in case you prefer those over the numbered grades 9-12 and lastly I included a blank printable in case for all the different version of preschool names!
• The tabs are the same, there are 2 blank tabs as well as every year, grade and preschool nomenclature! I crowdsourced on my Facebook Page and included all the preschool names you guys listed there!
• If you choose to personalize the outside with vinyl, you may want to label both the short and long sides of the bin depending on how you need to store these. (see photo below)

Why use a School Memory Bin?

I know you are probably thinking “Well Cheryl this is just ANOTHER thing I have to keep track of and up to date!” Let me stop you right there. I promise this won’t be another incomplete baby book fiasco! :)

Answer me this: Do you have a pile of school papers “to be filed”? Do you have a “command center” that is overflowing with papers? Do you have stuff from your child in several, random boxes and places around your house?

This bin creates an organized and centralized place for everything to go that you want to hang on to! You know all those organizing people say there should be a place for everything and everything in its place…well HERE IS THE PLACE!

When I want to keep an art piece or a written “What I love about my mom” writing I put it directly in the bin and then it’s safe, it’s organized, and it’s IN ITS PLACE!

It is not on my kitchen counter. It is not in a pile. It is not in a closet. It is where it belongs! {que the singing angels!}

How to Make School Year Memory Bin

You can find all of my Cricut Tutorials here and all of my Silhouette Tutorials here! Lots of goodness and step by step instructions!

As I mentioned above if you personalize the outside I recommend doing both the long and short side of the box so depending which direction you store them, you will know who’s is who’s if you have multiple small people!

Here you can see I used the Pencil from my School Days SVG set and also created a circle monogram with some of my favorite monogram fonts and then just used initials for my third. I let them choose what they wanted!

These Artwork Keepers area also awesome to collect all the projects throughout the year and then you can sort through them and keep the favorites!

DOWNLOAD SCHOOL MEMORY BIN PRINTABLES

You can find the School Days Clip Art & SVG files here if you’d like to use those to decorate your box!

There are extra hanging folders if you purchase the packs I have listed in the supply list. If you are interested in a “Home Bin” where there are folders for house/life-related things, drop me a comment below and let me know! I will work on those if there is interest!

PIN SCHOOL YEAR MEMORY BINS + PRINTABLES