I don’t know about you, but we get volumes and volumes of paper from the kids’ school throughout the year. Math sheets, spelling and grammar worksheets, essays, art projects, social studies…it’s endless.
Last year we designated an armoire as the station for our kids’ school stuff. Before we did that paper ended up all over the house. There are cubbies at the bottom where they put their backpacks. Honestly, it’s great because we can shut the doors and don’t have to see what is inside.
Because this is what’s inside:
Before the armoire got moved into the sunroom with all of our other furniture (while the living areas are worked on), I went through everything in there.
The majority of it went to the recycle bin. But, I did find a few gems that I wanted to consider more thoughtfully before I disposed of them. This one I just took a picture of before I recycled:
This one came from The Boy’s writing journal that I kept to make decisions about later:
I’ve been researching what to do with all of the artwork the kids have generated in their lives. There is a lot of it. More than what is pictured above. I have boxes and boxes of it. I don’t want to keep it all, but I do want to have some documentation of their childhood.
What to Do, What to Do
I’m not a scrapbooker, so that’s out. I did have tons of scrapbooking supplies, mind you, but those all got donated. For several years I fancied myself a scrapbooker. Or a potential scrapbooker. I’ve finally come to terms with my non-scrapbooker status. It just made me feel guilty to look at the supplies and stacks of unscrapbooked stuff. So I let it go.
Digitizing Paper
I found a place called Scan Cafe. They will scan your photos, videos and, I assume, artwork and compile it into a CD or digital video frame. I’m thinking that once I get the artwork and other school papers down to a manageable amount, I can send them to a service like this. I also have tons of photos from before the age of digital cameras, so I’m considering having those scanned as well.
If I did it myself, it would take an eternity. And to be blunt, I won’t do it and I won’t throw them out. The stacks and boxes will just clutter up the house for years to come. I know this about myself, so I’m trying to find a solution.
Have you used a service like this? Do you have another solution to the kid artwork and photo challenge? Please let me know in the comments.
This is what was left from the armoire after I was done:
The clear plastic container holds school project related supplies (colored paper, push pins, etc.) and the pencil box has glue sticks (regular and the ones for a hot glue gun). The red plastic bins have the work I kept to go through later. There is a small stack of lined paper I kept, as well. Their school provides most of the school supplies they need, so we only need the odd piece of paper every once in a while.
The printer we had in the armoire (but haven’t used in over a year) will be sold on CraigsList, donated or Freecycled.
Once we put everything back together in the house, I’m thinking there will be a lot of empty space in that armoire.
Empty. Space.
Nice.
I struggle with keeping all my children’s memorabilia. Keeping it digitally is interesting. Can anyone comment if they did this and did they feel this was an acceptable replacement? Thank you.
I have taken lots of digital pictures over the years of not just school work/artwork, but old toys that the kids outgrew. When they knew we could take a picture to remember the toys, they were able to let go easier of the stuff. It has helped me, too. You can always turn the pic into a poster if you are ever inclined to do so. We were able to put together a cool slideshow for my stepdaughters high school graduation party that had all different kind of pics! Everyone really enjoyed it, including her.
My parents moved when I was an adult. I helped with the heaving/packing process. My mom had saved a couple of pieces (really, about 2/year) from each of us. I had a couple of cute things framed for her as Christmas presents which she really enjoyed. Don’t feel like you have to keep every scrap of paper with paint on it, your adult children will just think you’re crazy when they have to help you clear out! 🙂
Wow! What a clear out. I think paper secretly multiplies when we aren’t looking. I have small plastic suitcase like boxes from the container store for each or our kids. I put all things that I feel I need to keep inside. The whole box needs to make it through their entire schoolhood. When I see them looking to full, I am forced to reevaluate the contents. Most of the time I feel different about items I couldn’t bear to part with last year.
Great job! I have a tub about the size of a filing cabinet drawer for each child. When they come home, they show me whatever they have in their backpack and the it goes straight into their tub. I go through each one at the end of the school year. It’s so much easier to decide what to keep when you have it all and it keeps it all in one spot.
Empty space is THE BEST. Yay you!
I recycle most of the kids’ papers, although I do have a couple of covered containers that I will put things I feel should be kept–school journals, mostly, because come on! Those things are hilarious. Also, it helps that once a kid reaches middle school, the paper coming home is vastly diminished.
Oh, and I gave up scrapbooking too, because eventually I realized that scrapbooking? Is boring. I make albums online now (although I’m kind of bad about that… working on 2011, 2012 AND 2013) and like that better–no supplies to deal with and a pretty book that is delivered to my door. I have only minimal guilt that my oldest has a school scrapbook with all her photographs et al and my youngest has nothing. I’ll figure something out later…
It HAS to feel good to purge 🙂 Frames . . . frames and frames. I like to keep my kids’ artwork (some of it anyway) . . . I find items that are the same size and will stack 3 or 4 of them on top of each other in a picture frame – I’ve found some great ones at Goodwill – a little paint does wonders (no, I am not crafty). When I feel the urge, I rotate a new one to the front. Works great for hallways and guest bathrooms. And the kiddos love to see them and always notice them after the rotation.
Love seeing your progress!
Uncluttered.com recently had a post on this. I believe Vaness Hayes of and getsimplifized also has a post on this.
I am just about to go thru all my 2 adult children’s school stuff. They did Waldorf, so there’s very pretty artwork and stuff, but I’m going to get it down to one bin each. Or one bin, even better, total.
Great job!
My sister-in-law works for a professional organizer, and she passed along the following idea to me. I put all the papers (after recycling any busy work papers as well as the bazillions of fliers the school sends home) in a small tub until the end of the school year. At that time, I go through and find both my and my children’s favorites/those that represent their year and recycle the rest. I then have another box where all the keepers go. If the “keepers” box gets filled, I go through that too – sometimes the perspective of a few years helps me get rid of even more. For now, I’d say, find a “keepers” box for each kid, and just sit down with those boxes, a maybe box, a recycling bin and a stack of their papers. Go through all your papers once, then go through the maybe box again. Send what survives to the Scan Cafe. Oh, and if it were me (I’ve yet to scan anything), I ‘d probably would keep original copies of some their favorites each year anyway, because a small box with a few papers from each year would be fun for them as they grow up.
Something I worry about with turning it into a CD or digital movie or whatever is that one day that particular platform / program / medium will be defunct. I like the idea of having a scrap book or album made using an online creator. I have used Blurb to make books before. It’s super expensive for one book (we wrote a picture book for Little Fearse and it cost about $70 to print) but they are professional quality – plus for a few bucks extra they gave us the book in pdf format, so we could print other copies if we wanted to. We plan to use the blurb platform to turn our blog into a book when this year is over, mainly as a record for Little Fearse. They have a program on the site that will do it all for you. I haven’t explored it hugely, but it will be one of my first post BNN purchases. We have used a cheaper Australian site to make photo albums – the best of these was an album of photos of Little Fearse that was free excl. postage through Paypal. Whoop! Something else to consider. 😀
I’m 46 years old and I swear I kept every piece of schoolwork that I ever did all the way through grad school. After grad school I moved across country. I purged quite a lot, but not everything. I still have one file box that has a few special pieces of work from each grade and most of my key papers that I wrote in college or grad school. I was never particularly talented in the arts, so I find it quite amusing to look in the box now and realize that most of what I kept from each grade was the artsy work that I was really proud of. All these years later I still have just one box and that feels ok for me.
My post should say unclutterer.com. Auto correct sorry
Who knows? You might even get to the point of considering getting rid of the armoire!! That’s what tends to happen once you start decluttering…
As for the kids’ paperwork: my kids are 12 and 10 and I have 2 A4 folders with plastic inserts for each of them. One is for all their school-related stuff like the best essays, art work and reports. My daughter is in high school now, so hers is full of her primary school work.The other is for their best artwork. They are both prolific drawers and I’ve kept their best stuff,. That’s it.
My Mom handed over all of my school stuff including some oil paintings I did in an art class. I took a couple of pictures and chunked it all. I really don’t have any regrets, and my Mom and I enjoy focusing on my kids’ accomplishments. As I help clear out family members’ homes after they move into a nursing home or after their passing, I notice that the amount of pictures and papers kept increased dramatically beginning with my generation.
We don’t have kids but we struggles for years with the paper monster (that’s the best way to describe it) and we had one move and we had like 4 boxes (I mean big big big boxes) of papers. So I bought two of those file boxes and now that is were everything lives from taxes past, manuals for things we still have and use, bills, investments, payroll stubs and such and it is so much nicer and easier to find what we are needing. I can’t believe how bad it was and out of all those boxes everything could be shredded but the taxes is that sad or what.
I think its great that you got rid of so much stuff. It’ll be easier to enjoy what you did keep!! Keep up the great work!! I love reading what you are going thru.
We keep less then 5 ‘gems’ filed in there school file box, plus there report cards. We frame art pieces we/they REALLY love too. Anything else that we want to have a memory of I take a picture of. This eliminates the need to scan and can be uploaded quickly and organized. I recently asked our eldest to go through her school papers and it was astounding how little she feet she needed to keep. So with that in mind, next year, our kids will be in grade 3, grade 1 and junior kindergarten – the paper gets some time on the fridge and then we recycle almost all of it.
Keep trucking through it all the clutter. It is worth it…simplicity is on the horizon.
My parents had me keep most of my school papers in a box in my room, and I was the one who sorted through most of it, not them, and I decided what to keep. I think I did a big purge after high school and between college and grad school, and smaller ones in between. I suggest getting the kids involved and letting them decide what is most important to keep, and maybe a few pieces that you want but they hate.
That’s an excellent suggestion. That’s going on the project list for before school starts.
Take photos of your favorite pieces of art work and then have a company like Snapfish turn it into a book. You can choose hard or soft cover and they often have half-priced deals or free shipping.
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A friend’s Dad took the oversize paper from kindergarten and framed it. One for each child with several in each frame to be rotated through out the year.