Throwing out children's work

[Villanelle1]

When I had 2 children I used to keep their pictures from nursery, work books from primary school etc. Now I have 4 children it seems too much. I'm wanting to have a good clear out. Do I throw away their school books etc or keep them?

Bin it. I binned all my kids stuff apart from a few calanders they made with handprints or pics on them or xmas tree decs, and they have never once asked for any of it. Having worked in a school i know the majority of children would quite happily throw the giant folder of stuff to take home each year straight into the bin on the way out the door for summer. Its almost like a bit of a clean slate for alot of them. It tends to be only the most studious ones who ponder over a few items. Why not ask your kids to pick out their two proudest items each year to put in a box or folder and throw the rest.

I chose to keep nothing, my brother chose to keep everything from school, and he still has it now. I don't even know why!

Okay, so it might be nice to look back on in years to come if you can remember projects you did with friends, or even look back and remember specific teachers.. but tbh I think when you consider the clutter, it's definitely nostalgia that I could live without!

My DM kept everything that DSis and I ever came home from school with. We're both in our 40s and a few years ago, DM called us both round to look through boxes and boxes of crap artwork and school books to see what we wanted to keep. She was utterly horrified when we tipped the whole lot into the recycling bin!

I'm just doing this now. I kept pretty much every doodle, picture, certificate going: now we are trying to sort out the house and there's mountains of stuff the DC did. I feel guilty throwing it away, but we don't have the room to store it all, and realistically, are they going to want it in the future? I have a school book from primary school that I kept, as it makes me laugh: DM gave Dsis and I a 'Christmas present' a few years ago that was all our old school reports, from infants to senior school. It was actually quite depressing reading them (professional under-achiever)! They went straight in the bin. I have kept the Mothers Day cards and birthday cards, but only special stuff gets kept these days.

What are you keeping them for? Why not keep one or two special bits each year and then have a memory box for each

My parents still have my school books at home, in the loft - how ridiculous, as I don't even have my degree notes! I throw the bulk of what comes home from school/nursery. I only keep hand/footprints, anything of special artistic merit (school age) and firsts for anything significant (piece of writing, etc)

We went through a massive pile of stuff in the loft last year - my degree notes, DH's degree notes, letters from friends at university, job applications, cards from relatives who have since died...

We binned nearly all of it, but you know what, actually it was lovely to leaf through it with our teenagers/kids of early university age, and realise just how young we were (when we thought we were adults who knew it all).

DH said at one point, 'What did we keep all this stuff for?' The answer, I think, is that that week was exactly what we'd kept it for, and now it could all go.

You could do the same with your kids: keep bits for a year or even 10, look at it, laugh at it, exclaim at how little they were at the time, photograph it and then bin it.

They will very rarely remember the pictures that mysteriously go missing, but they may well enjoy the few bits that you keep.

Thanks for the replies. I want to throw it away, never look at it. I'm nearly 40 and have never looked or wanted to look at my school books either. I come from a family who kept everything so felt like I should keep it so its nice to hear just to throw it away. Will get sorting

I'm keeping hand prints, homemade cards etc but the books are going

Keep them.