The one about your kid’s artwork

You may remember that I went on a mission to streamline and declutter my life and home prior to our big move, all thanks to Allie Casazza. I slowly and steadily went through many areas of our home and attacked the issue of clutter, disorganization, and, well…too much crap. As we prepared to move into our new home, I knew that we did NOT want to just box up all of our overflowing possessions and stuff them into our new space. We needed to learn how to let go of items we did not need and streamline our “collections” down to what we absolutely loved. It has been a learning experience for the entire family.

 

Our children were on board from the beginning. It makes sense, too. Children are genetically little versions of their parents. They have our DNA. They live with us. They watch us. They listen to us. They pick up on what stresses us out and also on what makes us happy. They are so intuitive. So it stands to reason that if you are a person who is deeply bothered and affected by excess clutter and items lying around, then your children probably are bothered by it, too. They may not be able to verbalize that, and they may even act like it is completely fine to keep living the way that they are, but that’s because they don’t really know better. When you know better, you do better, and that is our job as parents to pass on what we have learned to our children.

 

So, I knew that I was not going to be able to make this change in our family without our children’s blessings. As a result, they became a part of the streamlining of our toys. They had a say in what stayed and what went. They were very excited at the idea of passing their toys onto other children who would enjoy them, and they have truly loved playing with the toys they really love. I haven’t heard them say they missed one single toy that we purged. They still have plenty to play with and are not deprived whatsoever.

 

The toy problem was a great hurdle to clear, but there was one other huge obstacle pertaining to our kids’ clutter that we needed to address.

 

The artwork.

 

If your children are in any kind of school, daycare, or educational program, they are going to create hundreds, if not thousands, of crafts, gifts, and masterpieces throughout the years. They will proudly present them to you and expect that you keep them until you die.

 

And you will want to (mostly…), but if you have more than one child, you will quickly realize that there are not enough totes and storage containers in all the Targets of the world to house all of those artifacts. And even if you buy all of the bins and totes, you still have to find a place to put all of the bins and totes. And make sure you store them in a place that won’t be exposed to water or extreme temperatures or else your precious pieces will be ruined in a matter of time.

 

I was doing the tote method for a while. Each child had a tote that would fit under our bed, and when it was full, we would have to go through it and discard the pieces we didn’t want to keep anymore to make room for the new. This was a decent idea except for the fact that remembering to store the artwork each time something new was brought home (which for us, with three children in school, became almost a daily occurrence) became impossible. I started just stacking papers up on a small counter in our kitchen until I had the time to sort and store them, but soon that became a huge eyesore in our house and just another thing I had to “get to.”

 

In my newfound motivation to declutter and purge, I decided to tackle the kids’ artwork once and for all. I pulled out all of the totes, which somehow had expanded to not just one tote for each child but 2-3 per child, and they were stored under our bed as well as our daughters’ bunk beds. I spent many afternoon nap times going through all of the well-loved pieces and thinking about how I was going to do this.

 

Here are few thoughts that came to mind as I was planning my strategy:

 

1. Wow! Our kids have made some adorable creations! Some of these are actually really cute and pretty. I wish I could see these more often than just when I want to clean out these bins.
2. Darn. Even though these have been in airtight bins inside our home (and not an attic or garage), the paper has started to fade and curl. Glued-on items aren’t staying on, and they are really starting to age…even though at the most they are only 8 years old. What will they look like in 40 years? And why did I keep anything with marshmallows or cereal glued on it? Gross.
3. How in the world are we going to continue to store these works of art for our children when we have four children? We will have a major storage scarcity issue in just a year or two.

 

After all of that thinking, I came up with a plan that would fix all of the above-listed problems. And yes, it involves throwing stuff away.

 

GASP. I KNOW.

 

It was painful to accept, but I needed to part with some (a lot) of these things. However, I felt really good about my plan of attack, and I am here to share it if you struggle with the same issues.

 

All you need are a phone with a good camera (I have an iPhone), the Dropbox app, and the Chatbooks app.

 

My process went as follows:

 

1. Start with one child at a time. I chose my oldest daughter because she had the most to sort through.

2. I sorted all of her artwork into piles.

• One pile for items that probably should never have been saved. If they don’t mean anything to me now, they won’t mean anything to me 10-20-30 years down the line.
• One pile for each grade level, including her daycare and preschool years.

3. I went to my Dropbox account and paid for 1TB of storage (1,000 GB) so that I could upload as many photos as I wanted. It is under $10/month.

4. I made Dropbox folders for each of my children and then made subfolders for each of them for each grade level.

 

 

5. I used a large, white tote lid as a background, and I went to a place in my house where we had good natural light, and I started with her daycare/preschool pile and took an individual photo of each and every item that I loved. I tried to let the artwork take up as much space as possible in the lens of my camera so that I wouldn’t have a ton of cropping & straightening to do after the fact.

6. I created an album on my phone for Noelle’s work and added all of those photos to that album.

7. Before I moved onto the next grade level, I uploaded the images that I just took to the Dropbox app into the appropriate folder.

 

8. I then went to the Chatbooks app and created a custom photo book for these images. I will make a book for each child’s work, split up into 1-2 grade levels at a time. I love Chatbooks because they are small (either 6” or 8” square books), modern, high quality, and perfect for sitting on a bookshelf as they don’t take up much space.

 

9. Once I completed the process, I moved on to the next grade level. Eventually, when I finished all of Noelle’s, I started on Charlotte’s work and repeated the whole process over again.

10. Along the way, I pulled out any item that had a handprint on it. As long as I it was flat and didn’t have something glued to it, I ran it through my letter-size laminator to preserve it. I decided to keep any of these items.

• Notes to Mama, little “I love yous,” and sweetness like that went into my own personal box in my closet. I love to keep things like that.

11. I also pulled out any artwork that was extra special or cool enough to be framed and displayed in our house. I couldn’t believe how many amazing pieces my children had created that were not doing anything except aging in a tote. These needed to be displayed! I set them aside and began collecting frames for them.

 

12. Once I was certain that I photographed and uploaded everything from an entire grade level, I pulled the trigger on ordering the Chatbooks. So far, I have purchased Noelle’s daycare and preschool books as well as her Kindergarten/1st grade book (I combined those two grades) and 2nd grade book. I also just ordered Charlotte’s preschool book since she will soon be entering Kindergarten. The Chatbooks can hold hundreds of photos, but I thought it would be better to stick with 100-150 photos per book so that we could limit the time-frame of each book.

13. I waited until I received the first Chatbooks before tossing the original artwork. I wanted to make sure I was happy with the finished product and the quality of the book. I had already been using Chatbooks for my Instagram photos, and I knew I loved it for that, but I didn’t know how I would feel about these sentimental pieces. My husband and I both agreed that we LOVED the book of artwork and knew this was the way to go for us.

 

 

14. TOSS THE ART WORK. Yep. In the trash. It’s probably best that the kids don’t see you do that.

 

I have now streamlined what was once 8 totes of children’s artwork, school work, certificates, and cards into one small tote of super special things for each child, and a few awesome creations to be framed and displayed in our home.

 

We, as well as our kids, can pick up their art books anytime and view the special pieces and remember the stories behind them. Rather than keep these precious items hidden away in a tote to fade and age (because they will, regardless of how airtight the bin), we are all able to enjoy looking at them as often as we want.

 

We could even print copies of the photographed artwork and enlarge them, frame them, turn them into gifts, etc. I absolutely love that regardless of water damage, fire, dust, heat, or any other force that would destroy the original pieces, we will have a digital record of these precious memories via Dropbox. Even if my phone crashes and I lose all of my photos (oh, that would suck), I have them protected in Dropbox. I also can easily share the images with my husband and extended family.

 

For maintenance, I plan to keep my handy background (the white tote lid) in an easily accessible place. When my children bring home a work of art, I will photograph it as soon as possible, upload it to Dropbox, add it to a Chatbooks photo book, and then pitch it immediately. If I am going to keep it, I will have it framed as soon as I can. If it has a handprint on it, or if it is a Christmas ornament, I will either laminate it (if I can) or store where my other precious ornaments are kept. I will no longer be using the “throw it in a pile on the counter and I will deal with it later” method.

 

I know that this process will not be for everyone. There will many people who have all kinds of feelings about throwing away these items, but this is working for us, and that is what matters to me. If your current “system” is failing you and causing you stress, I highly encourage you to give this a try, too!

 

If you do not already have a Chatbooks account, you can get one here and earn get $10 off your first purchase. When you order your first Chatbooks, I will earn a $15 credit.

 

I recently purchased a ton of frames from IKEA, measured all the artwork I wanted to frame, and ordered mats for each piece. Once all the mats arrive and we get everything framed and hung up, I will create a post with the details!