Organizing School Papers and Kid’s Artwork

Posted by Laura on June 30, 2009 · 21 Comments

School just ended for us last week so yesterday and today we have been going through the piles of paper that came home with the kids on the last day. I’ve written about my process before and that system is pretty much the same one we used again this year. If you are also inundated with school paper piles, here are some of my previous links that might help you:

Organizing all that school clutter

Organizing keepsakes with memory binders and totes

Taming the school clutter….again

image courtesy of Zen

Looks like some of my organizing buddies are doing the same thing. Check out these great ideas:

School Time Papers @Complete Organizing Solutions

School Papers – Simple Steps to Decrease the Clutter @Organize with Sandy

Budding Artists – Taming Your Children’s Art Clutter @A Fresh Start

I also came across some unique ideas for showcasing your child’s artwork. These would make such great grandparent gifts.

Children’s Artwork Necklace ~ I just absolutely love this idea and only $9.00!

Tikatok ~ where kids write, illustrate and publish their own books. What a great keepsake!

For even more ideas here is a short video from Monkey See. I love this site and got totally sucked in the other day watching a whole series on how to work with curly hair, it was very cool :)

Video ~ Organize Artwork

Have you tackled the school paper pile yet?

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Taming the school clutter…again

Posted by Laura on July 7, 2008 · 16 Comments

It’s that time of the year again. My kids finished school on June 26th but with leaving for holidays last Saturday I didn’t have time then to deal with all the papers, workbooks, supplies, duotangs, art, etc that comes home at the end of the year. So I gathered everything up into baskets (one for each kid) and put it aside to deal with later.

Today is later.

Thankfully as the kids get older this process does get easier and easier. All the years of training is finally starting to pay itself off. I don’t say this lightly. Letting the kids have a say in what stays and what goes at times has been painfully traumatizing for me. But each year as they practice their decision making skills they get better and better at quickly filtering out what is truly important to them and what is not.

My daughter’s is the green basket and as you can see it’s not as full. She actually did a pre-sort all on her own, tossing the stuff she knew she definitely didn’t want to keep. That is huge because my daughter is normally a pack rat (like you wouldn’t believe) and usually doesn’t want to part with anything.

Anyone else still have the school clutter to deal with?

Start by consolidating it into baskets and then as you get a moment you can pull one out, do what you can and if you don’t finish then it’s easy enough to tuck away again. I’m a big fan of breaking projects down into manageable steps. For example one step could be to just sort it all out into various piles first then worry about tackling each pile as time allows.

Using the basket system makes for slightly less twitching, just don’t get too comfortable with it there :)

For more info about what I do with what ends up staying please refer to these related posts:

Memory Binders

Organizing all the school clutter