How To Make A Year DIY Memory Box

Check out this quick and easy DIY Memory Box we made for the year 2018. You can easily make one from a shoe box or any other small-ish box you have lying around. Decoration and design is totally up to you – ours has a bit of an old haunted house vibe which I love. I didn’t buy any new supplies for it, I just used what was lying around.

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What’s A Memory Box

The idea for the memory box came from an old coworker of mine. She called hers a year box. The idea is to create a box that has a small opening but is sealed everywhere else. You put memorable stuff in the box through the year, then open the box on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day to reflect on your fun year of receipts and fortune cookie fortunes. Well, that’s kinda how ours went anyway. Lol. As the year progressed, I didn’t feel like we were doing a good job of putting stuff in the box. But when it was all said and done, we still had a ton of fun stuff to go through, some stuff I didn’t even remember. And it was so much fun! So if you think you won’t be able to find anything to put in there, you would be surprised. This is especially good if you’re someone who, like me, just likes to keep useless ephemera like movie ticket stubs and mini golf score cards.

If you’re reading this post and it is past the first of the year don’t worry, you can still make a box to open at a later date. It doesn’t even have to be for the calendar year – you could easily do one for your birthday or an anniversary – as long as the box is shut, stuff is put in it, and it’s opened on a specific date, you’re good to go.

What To Put In Your DIY Memory Box

Positive Things Only: I strongly recommend only putting positive things in the box. I’m not a naturally sappy person so I am not saying to ignore the ugly and often shitty parts of life, just that, when you’re faced with a whole box of positive stuff at the end of the year, it’s nice. It’s nice to be able to look at all those things and think that maybe all the little positive things that happened throughout the year really added up.  Also, having a positive-only memory box means you won’t put in a mean note while you’re mad at someone. Because once it’s in, you can’t take it back out.

Date Everything: You think you’ll remember when something happened, but you won’t. Date everything. It’s more fun that way.

Get A Tear-A-Day Calendar: This sounds silly, but I would have put probably 25% less stuff in the box if I hadn’t had a tear a day calendar. Instead of throwing the day’s page away, I would write on the back of it something fun that happened that day. I very strongly recommend getting one! Browse tear-a-day calendars on Amazon here. If you don’t get a calendar, keep post its or a small notepad near the box.

More specific stuff to include: receipts, ticket stubs of any kind, instant photos, (we have an Instax Mini camera and I love it!) fortune cookie fortunes, printed photos, travel souvenirs, photo booth photos, tags off of clothing, to-do lists, gift tags, scraps of paper, birthday or holiday cards, yarn or ribbon from a project you worked on, business cards, freebies from events or festivals, notes from others or yourself, dried flowers & plants (make sure these are completely dry), newspaper or magazine clippings, bracelets from bars/events.

What was in our box? A lot of receipts for chinese food (I thought that was a special occasion, lol) and a lot of fortune cookie fortunes. Notes I wrote about stuff we did and notes I wrote specifically to Jamie but put directly in the box. Decent amount of those 21+ bracelets from the bar, valentines, a few business cards, leftover casino vouchers for a few cents. “Poop notes” which are notes Jamie slid under the door of the bathroom while I was pooping which was pretty hilarious. Also I did break the positive-only rule and put in some hospital bracelets.

DIY Memory Box

My directions here are pretty non-specific. You can basically do whatever you want as long as your box is sealed and there’s an opening. Choose your box size based on what you’ll be putting in. Ours is probably the size of a large shoebox (Not a big boot box, but not like a tiny slip-on box either.)

Use any type of tape or glue to shut all parts of the box. I would recommend decorating before you cut the opening, I think that would have been easier than what I did. A long, small slot is recommended so that things can go in and can’t come back out. In that scenario everything doesn’t have to be folded (it did on ours). I made ours the way I did because I didn’t want it take up a lot of real estate on my desk, which is where it lived for a while (see above photo). But if you do a slot you don’t have to worry about having any kind of string or knob to open and shut the door.

Again, decorate the box with anything you’d like. I used scrapbook paper for the outside but you could also paint or collage with magazines or photos. The knobs were some random things Jamie had in our craft supplies. I’m pretty sure the stick-on white letters are from the dollar store. The cards (which spell out 2018, Jamie kept asking what 2-10-8 meant…) are vintage rook cards.

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