Here they come......the school work and papers!  How do you deal with all of it?  

You have to have a plan and you have to stick to it! 

The first thing you need to do is realize that your children are not going to want to look at every single paper that they bring home from school.  Many parents think they are doing permanent damage to their children if they throw a paper away.   On the contrary, you are teaching them a wonderful life lesson that not everything is worth keeping.  Let's do some math here.....if you keep every school paper from every school year and they are in school for 15 years (I am assuming a couple of years of preschool), that means that you would have accumulated approximately 7300 pieces of memorabilia. 

Now let's think about this......your mother hands you every single one of your school papers since preschool.  What are you going to do with them?  When are you going to have the time to look at all of them?  Once you have gone through them are you going to store them somewhere?  That is a lot of boxes of papers added onto the massive amount of papers you have accumulated as an adult! 

So what is the plan:

1.  Store the Papers Throughout the Year -If you have a hard time purging as soon as a paper gets home, find one place to store the child's papers throughout the year.  An under the bed storage box (see below),  a banker's box (see below) or a clear container are good options.  Once the year is over, go through all the papers and decide which of the papers are the most important to keep.  You can do this alone or have your child help you decide which of the papers are most important to him/her.

2.  Purge Daily - If you are less sentimental, go ahead and throw the papers out, that you know you won't want to keep, after you have looked at them. 

3.  Display for a Limited Amount of Time - If there are special papers that you would like to display, display those papers for only a limited time.  If they are extra special then put them in your permanent keep box.

Children's artwork can be overwhelming.  Beginning with their first scribbles all the way to their art work in high school you can end up with an incredible amount of "art". 

There are several ways to deal with art work when it comes into the house.

1.  Display for a Limited Amount of Time - Have a designated spot in the home for displaying those art pieces.  Display them for a day, week or month and then replace them with another piece of art.

 2.  Display in a Frame - There are currently frames, on the market, that will allow you to display one piece of art and store several other pieces of art behind the one displayed (see picture below). They are available online and at stores like Target.  This option allows you to easily change what is being displayed. 

3.  Collect All the Art Work for 1 Year - When the child comes home with the art work, put it in a designated spot.......a box, a drawer, an under-the-bed box, etc.  Then when the year is out, look through all the art work and pick out those pieces that are the best and represent your child best.  Put the "keeps" in a permanent storage box that is designated just for your child.

4.  Display Areas - If you have an area of your house that you can set up to hang the art work, many people choose this option.  Below are several ideas that you can choose from or one of these ideas may spark an idea of your own!

This poster was created by a company called JUXIO.com.  Take several of your child's favorite pieces and upload to their site and you can create your own. 

Create your own photobook of your child's art work or of your child holding his/her art work. Through Snapfish or Shutterfuly you can do this easily. 

5.  Permanent Storage -There are several ways to store their art work.  

    Clear Storage Containers

Art Portfolios  

Archival Boxes

6.  Sharing Art Work - Giving some of your child's art work to grandparents, aunts, uncles is fine as long as you are not overwhelming them and expecting them to see it as the "masterpiece" that you do. Taking some of the art work to a nursing home to brighten someone's day is always a fun idea and a great lesson for your children. 

Just remember, when you are saving anything for your children, someone is going to have to deal with it in the future.  Don't burden them with so much memorabilia they become overwhelmed and can't enjoy any of it!

Along with art work, your child will come home with some other beautiful masterpieces.  Again, be selective in the pieces you keep.  Not every thing your child makes reflects their interests, gifts and personality.  They create some things to merely complete a required task to be able to do something they would really like to do! 

• Find one area - a shelf or an area in your child's room -for these other masterpieces to be displayed.  Try to confine the items you keep to that area. 
• You can also create a photo book, with the favorite pieces 
• Share some of these pieces with relatives or people that would appreciate them however, don't overwhelm others just because you don't have the heart to throw it away!
• Remember you are teaching your child a lesson.  Not everything is valuable and worth holding on to.  You are teaching them at an early age to surround themselves with things they really love and cherish.   



Have a great school year!

Happy De-Cluttering!

Peggy