How to Organize School Artwork + Memories
You may also like this blog post: Organizing Kids Artwork Into Wall Art
We have two kiddos in school now, and the sheer amount of paper that comes home each afternoon can sometimes push me over the edge. So how can I easily know how much of the school artwork + memories I should save?
I love taking a problem in our home and finding a solution. It’s strangely satisfying.
For me, I can easily look at the pile of papers and know which ones are artwork that’s meaningful to me or a schoolwork milestone I want to remember for that age. And, it’s usually pretty obvious what should go to the recycling bin. But I realize not everyone is big on purging and this could be more of a struggle. If so, maybe you involve another person in your home to help you make those decisions. Your spouse, or even allowing your child to decide which ones they want to keep forever.
START HERE
I knew I needed a temporary home for those items that I selected to keep. I chose this extra notebook that we had lying around and put it on the shelf in our linen closet. Every time I pull papers aside (and that definitely does NOT happen every day), I just transfer them to this notebook.
ONCE A YEAR
But do you know what I found after a year of doing this?? I still had WAY too much stuff to save all of it. So, I pulled it all out at the end of the year and laid it in piles for each child. Then I followed the same process and decided which ones I really needed to keep. It’s often easier to downsize if you purge in shifts, and this was no different.
FINDING THE RIGHT PRODUCT
Once I had my final artwork + memories, I went shopping for a permanent home for them. A place they could go at the end of every year.
I found this expandable file box for my daughter – I’m a sucker for anything with a polka dot. They don’t sell my son’s design anymore but they do sell several other fun designs. They each keep theirs high on a shelf in their bedrooms and they absolutely love looking through them when I add their new pile each summer.
LABELING
Here’s what the inside looks like. I used this inexpensive label maker to label each tab from preschool all the way through high school.
Sometimes the simplest solutions work the best. But the most important thing is to always have a system in place – if you have a system and follow the system, you got this!
FEELING STUCK?
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