Organizing All That Stuff That Kids Bring Home From School
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I think I mentioned recently that I have a bunch of different projects happening around here. If you were to visit my house you would encounter piles in each room with a project underway. These are projects that are getting attention here and there when I happen to be in that particular room.
Sometimes things are just shuffled but I have been trying really hard to actually make a dent in each project with the precious minutes when I find them. That dent may be just a tiny one, but it is step forward.
If you were to look on the floor in Anna's room, between the albums and the crib (shown above) you would find this:
It's been there for a couple weeks now.
This is the beginning of a project to organize Simon's artwork and papers and evaluations and teacher notes and all that good stuff from preschool through first grade that has made it's way home in his backpack.
The overflowing basket is kindergarten and first grade. The 8.5x11 binder also holds information from kindergarten. The other two piles are from the two different preschools he attended. Last week I went through much larger piles from these years and have already whittled it down to what I want to keep.
How did I decide what to keep?
I am pretty ruthless when it comes to this kind of stuff. Most of the papers from the early preschool years were random coloring sheets with the lovely random marks of a three year old who put very little pressure on his crayons & pens. I kept a few of those and recycled the rest. I did not need to keep them all. I definitely kept notes from the teachers, photos of the class, evaluations, schedules of what they were working on at a certain point in time, etc. I envision going through each pile again to make it even smaller before moving on to working with some of the papers.
What I want to keep are the pages that help round out and complement the stories that live in his albums right now. I love this kind of content/documentation for his albums. When I
look back on things that my Mom kept from when I was growing up I love
to see the papers with my handwriting or notes from teachers. These are real life gems.
Here's my plan for the stuff I do keep:
(1.) Some of the papers and artwork will go directly into his albums from those years. I am planning to simply slip many of them into 8.5x11 page protectors. This should be fairly simple since I have all the layouts/albums in order already (you can read about that monster project here).
At
one point in time I considered having separate albums just for documenting his
school years. After looking at all those albums on the shelf I decided
I just want to add them to the appropriate years and have them be a
collective reflection of stories and real-life papers (just like what I
am trying to do with Anna's baby album); essentially a more traditional kind of scrapbook.
(2.) Some of the papers and artwork will be used to create layouts. Just the process of going through the piles generated a bunch of different ideas for layouts; there are so many stories still left to be told. The layouts above from Life Artist and Creating Keepsakes 2008 both include papers from school. They are such a great jumping off point.
(3.) If there are leftover papers I may get a couple boxes for more long term storage. I would LOVE to only keep what can be stored in the albums I have already created. My goal is to create a home for all this stuff that is easily accessible, organized, and made relevant within his albums.
What I do now:
These days when Simon comes home I take a look in his backpack (if he has not already pulled out the papers to share with me) and am going through the papers on a daily basis. Some get recycled immediately, some are put up on the fridge to be enjoyed and celebrated, and some go into the basket you see above (which lives in Anna's closet).
In the future I would like to get in a routine where I take what comes home and either put it right into a page protector in an album or place it in a to-do pile in my office where I keep content I want to add onto an upcoming layout.
Look for another post in the coming months as I share my experience, process, and layouts.
Edited : so many great ideas in the comments today. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and systems!
Have a wonderful weekend!
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127 comments
wow, this is fantastic! what a treasure!
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Or you could just tackle the smaller items and sort and purge those for now. Let the bigger items sit for a few years. Then you will have a better idea what you still want to keep.
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You can also put everything on the fridge and once full, take 1 photograph. Then scrap/store the photographs.
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It's nice to know that a parent actually reads the notes that are sent home in the backpacks! LOL!
Love your project and can't wait to see more!
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I do this too. Is there anything sweeter than seeing some holiday handprints on the wall or popsicle stick ornaments on the tree? I keep all this stuff with the holiday decorations.
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Oooh, I like this idea! Another way to add art or schoolwork to layouts. XX's
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Don't know if someone has mentioned it yet, but what I do is the definite keepers go on the fridge first or in a frame/s in their bedroom that gets rotated, and others get used as giftwrap....that way they are still proud that their art is appreciated!
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Hi Ali! I haven't had a chance to read the other comments, so sorry if this has been said...
but my favorite "solution" when i want to keep almost everything but just can't.... is I take a photo of our son Greyson holding the bigger projects or papers. I try to take them on the day he brings them home from preschool and date them before I forget. I add those to his artwork album sometimes with a scrap or piece of the actual art he is holding. -Tara
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We absolutely do and appreciate them big time!
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I know we can't keep every art project, so we're keeping just a few for each year, but taking pictures of the rest, so we can put them on a digital frame. This way we can enjoy them all, but not have them taking up all the space.
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Great idea! Thanks for sharing this with us. I am in the same boat. I have a pile of art work, teacher's note etc all over the place and have been thinking of doing the same thing.
I am a lurker on your site. Now I've come out of the closet -lol. My 5 1/2 yr old boy's just recently been diagnosed with Autism and you have been such a great source of inspiration and support for me. THANKS!
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Hi Ali,
Could you tell me how you made your circle tags for your albums, did you use a Making Memories Tag maker to do it?
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Very inpsiring and comforting to know that you have piles too! As a teacher myself, i give you an A+ for your ruthlessness.
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Hi Ali,
I have 4 children and all are in different schools-high school, middle school, elementary & home. My elementary school daughter brings home a friday folder that contains work completed during the week & info coming from school. The 1st thing I do when she gets home is check her Friday Folder and categorize the papers. Signed papers to be returned to school get signed & placed back in her school folder & into her backpack. Info papers with important dates get quickly jotted down in the family calendar & the original gets tossed. Schoolwork that I want goes in a large memorabilia box & gets cleaned out again at the end of the school year. I keep the high schooler & middle school kids work in their own memorabilia boxes specifically for them. My little 3 yr old needs a box soon too. So I will have to get one for him. Thanks for all your inspiration!!! Keep it coming.
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I am so overwhelmed by this type of project. I have eight kids and six are in school. The youngest two will start preschool next year so I've really got to get it all together and soon!! I do have my kids stuff all piled together by school year (but all mixed together) and lots of artwork is framed. I've thought about doing the school of life books like Stacy J does, but that seems like a lot of books! Maybe putting things right into the regular album is a solution. I've never thought of that before. I'm not a chronological scrapper so sliding things into the "right" album wouldn't work. I supposed simple dates or school years would solve that problem. Oh my.... so many ideas, so much school work. Thanks for the ideas and inspiration.
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what a great post! where did you get the wire shelf and cover that you store your albums in. that's a great idea that would work well for me.
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The shelf is from Costco and the cover from the Container Store.
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When you put your pages into an album do the albums have order? Such as a year? I don't scrapbook chronologically, but I do have my albums that way so that when a page is done it can go into that year's book (that was a HUGE project in and of itself - getting them all into albums).
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Thanks :).
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Hi Giorgina - you can read all about that here: /2008/05/q-a-albums.html
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