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Organizing for Budding Picassos (And their Parents)

image By Professional Organizer Lea Schneider

Have you seen the billboards or posters that proclaim that babies do not come with instructions?

Kids may not arrive with instructions, but as soon as they can hold a crayon in their chubby little fist, they bring in a flurry of papers. Pretty soon, the refrigerator is tipping over, due to the weight of the refrigerator magnets and art work on it! Although making the fridge difficult to open may be good for our figure, it is not too great for the frustration level.

Children’s school papers, awards and artwork are something we certainly want to keep but they can quickly become part of the clutter in the household- from kitchen to dining table to kids’ rooms. The most important thing to realize in organizing this clutter is that we don’t need to keep ALL of the papers.

Corralling those papers, sorting and storing them is a great time to work on organizing with your kids. A child is not born knowing to be organized but learns that skill. Part of the problem with the scads of art work is the child doesn’t know what to do with them either.

I’m going to take you through the process to corral kids’ papers. First, we’ll look at clearing last years’.This is a parent and child joint job. (Unless you want to be your child’s secretary until they leave for college!)


Clearing the Paper Clutter

Remove all papers from the fridge and any place else they get tacked up and taped up. (Give the fridge a good polishing since it is so rarely empty.

Gather all the papers by going from room to room with a laundry basket. Don’t forget to look in old book bags, desk drawers and other clutter spots. A break for a Popsicle reward after that is grand.

Sort papers into stacks for each child.

This is a great time to take an organizing break. Have each child look through their papers and pick five that they want use for a special show and tell. They can tell you about the art work or about why they were proud of that grade. That selection process will help you see which papers are important, from your child’s viewpoint, to keep.

Decide how many papers to keep. Having a number to shoot for is very helpful. This way you can pick the ten best art papers, two reports and perhaps five to ten samples of school work or handwriting for that grade. At this point, this is where you scrapbookers pick out a couple favorites for the scrapbook.

Get rid of the excess old papers. Depending on the sensitivity of the child, you may want to quietly do this.

This is one case where I do think a plastic tub is great. For storing Kids' art work, I like the ones that have a lip to hold hanging file folders. (Look at office supply stores.)Choose the legal size as many pieces of school art are larger than standard paper sizes. You can label the folder with the grade.

For very large pieces of artwork: Sometimes there are poster sizes or large pieces that you want to keep but you don’t want to fold into a file folder. You can purchase an art portfolio. I recently bought a very large one at a discount store for under $15. You won’t have very many large items so this file should hold them many years’ worth.

Label! Be sure to label the tub with the child’s name. Label the file folder with the school year. You might even glue on an extra school photo from that year.

Sometimes, the art you want to remember isn't flat. It is a sculpture, mobile, or other larger object. You can take a photo of the item and the artist and then instead of saving the item, save the photo.

If you are looking for a new way to display more art, you can create a string gallery. Using a nail or thumb tack, you can add a string to the corner of the room and stretch it across the wall to the other corner. Then attach art work to the string with colorful clothespins or binder clips.