Craftiness continues....and a question

This is my daughter's last week at her current preschool.  She's been there since she was 11 months old.  They've seen me through good and bad times, so I'm a little sad to move on from there, but I know she needs the change.  Anyway, I made the pinterest chalkboards for each of her teachers and the director.  This is becoming my new favorite thing.  I'm thinking that my colleagues will be getting some for Christmas!  Here's how they turned out:

I just need to box and wrap them before Friday! 



Now onto my question:

I plan to implement student organization binders next year.  I'm doing a sports theme so I bought the STAR pack from Jodi at Fun in First Grade (it's awesome!).  For those of you that use binders, is the pencil pouch a must?  I was thinking of making DIY pouches like these from Classroom DIY:

From blog stalking I see that many use the pouch for money, but my students rarely buy lunch, and when they do, they mostly prepay.  They sometimes bring money to buy snacks at recess.  If I put pencils in there I'm afraid the DIY ones won't hold up.  I was initially thinking they could but money, book orders, and flashcards in it, so the DIY version would be ok.

Soooooo, my question is: What goes into your pouch and do you think the DIY version would hold up?  Thanks for the tips!