Ok, so I start this by telling you I am a minimalist, we homeschool, I own a local business, scrapbook and photograph everything and currently pregnant with #4. Oh, and I hate clutter more than anything in the world and my time is limited.
My mom recently gave me a box of my things from elementary school and everything was destroyed. Macaroni necklaces, etc were bug food and now bug feces. Not a fun thing to go through..... Candles were melted. It was awful.
I take pictures of ALL of my kid's projects and then throw them out after a month. Anything made with food gets photographed and tossed right away to keep the bugs out. My kids have never even asked for any of their projects.
My son is in his 4th year of soccer and is Jr. Black Belt, so we have almost 20 trophies. He's very much attached to those, we I've kept all of them, but I do have pictures of his standing with each one as he earned them, in case he ever gets to the point of getting rid of them.
I scrapbook online and at the end of the year, I have a book printed and sent to me. Each of their lives fit in a 12x12 book that is 1/2 inch thick - no projects!
They each have one rubbermaid bin that contains their first birthday's cards, baby blankets made for them, you know a few things they might want later. Each birthday after that, I scan each card and "put" it in their scrapbooks. I also scan homework samples and toss the rest - and I put one page of samples in each scrapbook, but I keep more samples in my homeschool file on the computer for records later.