Let’s talk about school crafts. How many do you have lurking in your storage room? When was the last time you looked at them?

I still remember the pride I felt when my son started preschool and came home with his first work of art.

That was soon followed by another and another. At the end of the school year, we had amassed quite the collection of artwork. Then came even more years of school and artwork, and my daughter is now firmly in the middle of this cycle as well.

This adds up to a LOT of papers collecting dust over the years. And even when you know the pile is growing to epic proportions, it’s hard not to feel guilty about tossing something your child worked so hard on.

So, what can you do when your heart wants to hold onto every precious masterpiece, but your head is telling you it’s just not practical?

Here are some tips!

1. Don’t save too much

I know this sounds obvious, but think about it for a minute: You might think you’re being reasonable if you decide you’ll choose 10 favourites a year to hold onto, but after 5 years, you’ll have 50 pieces of school crafts. Now, multiply that by the number of kids you have, and you’ll see why this isn’t quite the minimalist solution it seems. This brings me to my next point…

2. Choose 1 per year

Yes, that’s right: I want you to go through those boxes of school crafts and projects and choose just one per year to keep. I think the best way to decide is by being sentimental. That impressive presentation your child spent hours on containing facts about frogs might have earned top marks, but I always gravitate towards things like a poster my child made with photos and descriptions of how our family spent the summer. To me, the things that come from the heart are the real keepers.

3. You don’t have to say goodbye to everything

So we’ve established that you should really be holding onto one (or maybe two) of the best pieces each year, but that doesn’t mean the rest have to be completely forgotten. I take photos of much of the schoolwork I decide not to keep, and we gift some of the better ones to grandparents. They love having it – and showing it off – and it alleviates some of the mum guilt associated with discarding my kids’ work. Plus, my kids have always loved doing this.

4. Start off on the right foot

If you’re a new mum and your little one has yet to start school, there’s no reason to toss everything as soon as it gets home in the preschool years. Those first school projects are thrilling, and I know you’re going to treasure them. Since you don’t already have boxes of papers collecting dust at this point, go ahead and keep as many as ten per year. Be sure to set yourself a reminder to purge after three years or so. At that point, you’ll have a much bigger body of work to draw upon and it will be easier to spot which ones are standouts.

5. Don’t forget to look at what you’ve saved!

We keep all these school crafts and projects because we want to hold onto that joy we felt when we first saw them, but how often do you really go back and look through old schoolwork over the years?

Make a habit of enjoying what you’ve kept and going through all of it with your kids at the end of every scholastic year. You’ll find they’re far more interested in going through it when it’s just a small pile, and those memories are priceless!