What to declutter even old cards and school stuff

[thinkingmenomore]

Will I regret getting rid of school books.
Children hated school.
Also sentimental cards and leaving cards and baby cards. Just feel I haven't looked at any of this for yrs and the room would be so handy as everywhere in house got stuff.

Opinions please as not sure.

Has anyone regretted ruthlessly decluttering.

I keep very little and never regretted anything I’ve chucked. I have enough to look back - a few pictures or stories my kids did when little, but not exercise books and not stacks of drawings. A few cards which have nice messages in I have kept, but most cards are binned after a week or two. Basically one large cardboard box worth of sentimental stuff, maximum.

Just keep one or two really special or funny things that you either want to frame and put up, or stick in a small box, like the size of thise bixes that printer paper come in. If the box gets full then you have to bin something before the you can put something new in. Most of our old stuff just collected dust and was never looked at again. A few special things are nice to flick through occasionally.

I kept some of the stories and things they wrote about their lives when they were at school because these things show their personalities and who they were. But I ditched all the other books. I kept some of their pictures and more cards than I should but they are confined to one plastic box with a lid, which for 4 dc isn't too bad.
You can photograph stuff and keep it in the cloud if you don't really want to keep the physical thing but can't quite let it go totally either.

Oh gosh are you me OP, I have stacks of boxes in our spare room of the DC’s bday cards and all their school and nursery things. I really need to go through it and chuck 80% if it as the room is becoming unusable

I have everything 

A few years ago my mum suddenly produced every exercise book I'd ever brought home from school. She keeps literally everything! I binned most of it - there is no joy to be had from your old maths books! I only kept a few English books that had funny stories in.

With my kids I have a scrapbook and I stick in artwork and the good bits cut out from their work. There's still a whole plastic box full of stuff but at least it's edited and will hopefully be fun to look back on 😂

Another idea I've seen is taking a photo of the good stuff and then storing on a memory stick or drive or whatever. Binning everything!!!!!! I'm not sure I could!

Take a photo of the ones that are meaningful. Can make them into a photo book if you want.

We have a couple of special ones framed around the house but other than that I try not to keep all the stuff…. Hard though!

Chuck anything you haven't looked at in the last year

I decided to start doing this a couple of years ago (taking photos of artwork produced by my children/cards etc), and it’s definitely helped to remove my inner turmoil about throwing things away.

You could scan the kids' text books if you like. It's like compressing it