How To Organize Your Child’s Artwork

Posted on 10.22.07 in Parenthood and there are 11 comments.

This is a how-to outlining how to organize your child’s artwork.

Step 1: Organize

Gather all the artwork into a big pile.

Stare at it real hard.

Step 2: Confess

Ok, so I don’t actually have the slightest clue how to organize and manage all the art that is presented to me on a daily basis.

I’m convinced that preschool artwork is the true cause for worldwide deforestation.

Part of the problem is that I can be sentimental. Yes, it’s true. I’ll have the trash can ready for a pile of art and then I’ll see something…

“Oh! This paper has her first ‘Q’ - I can’t throw away her first ‘Q’”

As if, in 35 years, she’ll be sitting in the attic with an old memory box, lovingly pull out a piece of yellowed paper and with tears streaming down her face say, “M..mm...my first ‘Q’!!!!!”

Step 3: Beg

Clearly I’m in a desperate state.

Any of you wise parents, teachers, aunts, uncles, grandparents or organizing gurus have any tips for me?

Help me! Quick! Before the huge pile of art overwhel…

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Hilarious!  I was super excited when I read the title of this post....thinking that someone actually knows what to do with all the lovely artwork!  Maybe if I check back later, someone will have left a great idea! 

Lisa,
And I clicked on your comment hoping someone actually knew what to do…

Hopefully, someone wiser than us will chime in.

Ok, so I haven’t actually had to organize artwork yet, but I’m a sucker for an organization project.

Here’s my idea: Pick out your favorite project of the week (or let your girls pick our their favorite project from their week - whichever would be easier) and start a book.  You don’t have to do actual scrapbooking; my mom had one of those big photo albums with the 10x10 sheets that we put our old report cards in.  You could also just take a binder and some sheet protectors and accomplish the same thing.

....not that Im saying Im wiser…

I have a system that works well in our home.

1. For a chunk of time (the whole Christmas season, or throughout the summer or for a month) I make a pile of what I would call “possible keepers”. NOTE: I throw away the artwork that doesnt make the cut when the children are NOT home. Its rare if a child asks for something Ive thrown away.
2.After the pile has reached its capacity or the season is over, I sort through the “possible keepers” pile. Letting some time fly by gives perspective, No one would remember why we have a drawing of a pig in a dress, or I know for sure that a peice of artwork was a pretty special to file away.  You just know after sometime if its worth keeping around.
3.I then put away these special keepers in several places:
-Each kid has their own framed cork board to display their current artwork or papers or projects. Every two weeks or so I try to take off old papers and pin up new.
-We have a cedar hope chest of treasures from our children throughoutthe years, I file it away in 3ring hardback notebooks that have the year on them.(ALWAYS date the artwork!)
-We keep seasonal tubs in our garage. So I put away the “keeper” Christmas artwork (sometimes framed or laminated) in the appropriate seasonal tub to get out next Christmas. Or the handprint turkey placemat can go in the Thanksgiving tub to enjoy next Thanksgiving.

Things I consider when debating on keeping something.
~Is it original? I surely dont want to keep my childs teachers artwork. I rarely keep worksheets unless it has some sort of value- like an exceptional grade or something.
~Does it landmark a special time in their life? Handprints, writing their name. Or for instance, Emily was a star student a week ago, at the end of the week she came home with a Star Student book where all the kids wrote why she was a star student. It was precious and noted something she will never forget from 2nd grade!!
~Is it super duper special to my child? All of it is special, but really, is it super? duper? special? Dont be afraid to throw away! My husband has various items from his childhood, and alot of it has no meaning.

You just knew I couldn’t resist commenting - didn’t you?

OK - so here are my opinions on the matter:
(1) Organizational systems only work if they are easily maintainable.  If you ever get too elaborate, you will not maintain the system and it is therefore useless.  So you have to keep it simple.  This is different for different people.
(2) Memorabilia is only worth something if you keep it in a concise manner.  This goes for artwork, videos, everything.  So if you keep too much then someday when you or Little Person are looking at it, you will only make it through the preschool/kindergarten stuff before you both get bored or run out of time.  Or you’ll start skipping through the 18 years of stuff and miss some special things.  It will not be valuable if it takes up the entire space of your attic and you are only overwhelmed when thinking of looking at it.  If you video like me then you can see an example of this when you go back and watch baby videos - too long! 

So my recommendation is that you have flat document boxes for artwork and keepsakes(from office supply or organizational store) that you can stack and label. Decide on how many you would like to keep for the child’s life and go from there.  As soon as you unload the backpack and find something you think you want to keep, put it straight into the box you have placed in a convenient location.  If you’ve decided on a box per year then whenever you have free time, go weed through the box but make sure everything for that whole year fits into it.  The boxes can get expensive for multiple kids over 18 years so at the end of the year, transfer the contents to a scrapbook if you are cool like that or a labeled manilla envelope if you are like me and store away in a labeled box for years to come.  Then when you are old and grey, you will be able to sift quickly through the concise, labeled and organized memories in your rocking chair with no overwhelming feelings.  And by chance you turn cool and want to make a scrapbook, it would be easy with your envelope system.

And a note on reject artwork:  A wise friend once told me to stick it in an envelope and mail to grandparents, etc.  You know - keep some address labels you have made up and all you have to do is stick and send. It will make their day.

Glad to see you have no limits on length of comments!

A good friend and I were discussing this not too long ago...she had a great idea...keep the “keepers” of art projects and scan the rest into documents on your computer...label it with dates, age of kids, etc, and you have an electronic history of the MANY art projects of your kids.
Good luck!

I had an overwhelming amount of school papers, artwork, etc by the time the kids were in 3rd grade or so, and had to figure out how to deal with it.  I bought school folders with pockets and kept one for each year.  I only kept the things that would fit in the folder.  It took some time to pare it down the first time, but after that, I remembered to only keep things that would fit in the folder.  Then I found something like THIS BOOK and began keeping only what would fit into the pockets.  My kids sometimes get them out and look through them.  I don’t think they would ever look at them if they weren’t all in one place.  When they did 3D projects, we kept them around for awhile on display, then I took a picture and discarded the project (when they weren’t home) and put the picture in the their book.  I also kept major headlines in newspapers, amusement park tickets, etc and tape them inside the pages of the book.  I’m thinking of going back on the computer and putting pictures of things we did, or trips we took, for each year on a CD and putting the CD’s in the pockets, too.  Someday…

Also, my mom kept one of these books for me, and my kids like to go through it, too!

Step 4: cull the stuff

I have a folder for each child.  The most we can keep is one every two weeks.  So it would sit on the spare table (otherwise known as the formal dining room table) for appx 10 days.  Yes it looked junky, but lets face it: with 7 kids its hard to not look junky anyway.

If something really caught my eye, it goes into the folder.  Everything else goes into the trash when the kids are not looking.  They will not remember 99% of it, and hopefully the ones they do remember are in the folder.  Once every 6 months we pull out the folder and look at thier fabulous work. 

I have never had one say, “where is that one with the rainbow?” They are so excited that thier work has been memorialized in “the folder,” they don’t really care about everything else that is out the door already. 

You just can’t keep it all.

These are some great ideas, which I’ll be taking seriously!

One more, which is similar to something already mentioned:  when my daughter was about 4, she had this affection for making 3D art pieces out of things around the house.  They were very elaborate, very creative, and mostly not that attractive.  Also, we should have purchased stock in the scotch tape company. There was no keeping of these things, so when she was out of the house, I took pictures of them and threw the sculptures away.

Now, if I were really awesome, I would have done something with the pictures by now....

We have frames going up the stairs to my office and in their bathroom.  If the kids think it’s frame worthy art they take a frame down that has their artwork in it and replace it with the new piece.  Every gets the same number of frames.

They also each have a “portfolio” for the stuff that’s not frame worthy- a really big pocket type thing we made out of brown bags and they decorated.  It’s huge, like three feet by two maybe. 

We have two kitchen tables.  (Doesn’t look good but it works.) One we eat on (the nicer one) and the other is the art table.  Every day they clean up the art table and put the stuff they want to keep in a frame or their portfolio and put the stuff they don’t want on the counter for me to go through.  My kids are pretty good at picking out the good stuff.  I rarely keep something they tossed.  (Anything left out on the table or on the floor around it is tossed.)

When a portfolio is full we write the start and end date on it and put it in a big plastic bin in the attic for future perusal.

The good part of this system is that the kids have to think about what “good” is to them and we’ve had some great discussions about that.  Why the guy on fire drinking hot chocolate, Gresham?  What do you like about it?  And the framed art makes them feel, I hope, like the stuff they make is as beautiful to us as the stuff I paint or the stuff we bought.  They feel like what they make matters enough to be displayed or keep forever and they decide what’s not worth keeping and hopefully all this makes them want to keep creating while being more aware of how much gets wasted.

Oh, and we don’t really toss anything. We shred it and use the shreddings to fill gift bags and boxes.  I married Martha Stewart...only hotter. ; )

Wow. Great ideas everyone! I think I have a weekend project ahead of me.

I think the hardest part for me is actually processing the art and being consistent about going through it on a regular basis. I’m encouraged that several of you mention having you kids do the initial processing. I might have to try that out.

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