Back to school time means your kiddos are bringing home lots of school work and art work. And for many parents that spells clutter trouble. Here are some tips to make your budding artist feel appreciated without adding piles of craft projects.
Designate a drop zone.
Decide on one spot to collect completed artwork. You can use a bin, a folder, a box, whatever. The key is to make sure the spot is convenient so your kids place their masterpieces there each day. This also make it easy for you to review and “ooh and aah” over their creative genius.
Display.
Kids love seeing their artwork displayed in the home. It shows that you appreciate their creativity and are proud of them. Create a special place in your home for showcasing their best pieces. This can be as easy as putting them up on the refrigerator to creating a gallery wall in a room. Whatever you decide, make sure it’s easy to replace old artwork with new and then put the old artwork in your drop zone bin.
Collect.
Let’s face it, your kids will bring home a lot of artwork during the school year. Keep everything in the drop zone bin and let it collect for a week, a month, the whole year…or until the bin is full. It will be much easier to decide which pieces to keep permanently when you can see the entire collection.
Decision time.
Keep the truly special pieces. It’s not practical to keep every single drawing or macaroni masterpiece. If you find it truly difficult to decide, take pictures of your artist proudly holding up each piece of artwork. You can do so many things with digital photos that won’t take up nearly as much space as the actual artwork. By keeping the very best pieces, you cut down on what needs to be stored.
Organize and store.
There are so many options for organizing and storing artwork. For the special pieces you’ve decided to keep, make sure your solution works for the largest piece. Whether it’s an archival box, binder or folder system, keep a separate one for each child. You can organize it further by separating it into kindergarten, 1st grade, etc. Remember those digital photos you took? You can file them digitally by child and grade level, you can create a fabulous rotating screen saver, upload them to a digital frame or create a photo book. Just imagine the delight when Grandma and Grandpa open up a custom art book from Susie or Johnnie.
I would love to hear the creative ways you display, organize and store your children’s artwork.