Overrun by paper!
We are being overrun by paper! Our kids bring home a seemingly endless supply from school and preschool and when they are home they do lots of art. We have mounds of paper everywhere. How to manage it all?
4 Answers
-
One way to go is give each of your kids a box to keep stuff in. Give them the choice of whether to keep it in the box or recycle it; if the box gets too full then they have to go through and remove stuff if they want room for new stuff.
Another way I've heard of is to use a digital camera and a digital picture frame. Take pictures of all the artwork, and set the picture frame up to cycle through the pictures. That way the kids can still show it off, but you don't have to keep the actual piece.
-
Yes, I've been there! I use a combination of four things:
- Recycling bin. The older two (9, 7) have finally adjusted to the fact that I am not going to keep and/or display every worksheet they bring home, but I make a point of showing them I looked at it first. The almost-4-year-old, however, still needs to think that I keep every page she colors, so I am discreet when recycling hers.
- Fridge folders. These are indispensible for school-age kids. I have one colored file folder for each kid, attached to the side of the fridge with packing tape. The top and near side are left open, the back side is taped shut. These folders are where I put papers that we need to keep and do something with later. Like the paper describing the project due next week, or the spelling packet due Friday, or the doctor's form that has to be returned to school. Instead of folders on the fridge, other types of desk organizers would also work.
- Bulletin boards. We have three bulletin boards (not huge) hanging above each other, one for each kid. They can put things on it, or I can. Art projects or spelling tests etc. When it is full, or weekly, I clean it off.
- "Keep" box. The floor of the coat closet has a box where I put things to keep long-term, when I clean the bulletin boards. I later sort this into boxes for each kid.
That sounds so organized! And also exhausting :)
- Stephen M., Jun 23, 2010
-
For the art: Keep only the best, recycle the rest. At night, when the kids are asleep. To ease your conscience, take digital pictures of some of it before you discard it.
-
Can't top the previous answers but offer a complementary, less conventional approach: The Papervore Coffee Table.
We have a Fujitsu ScanSnap that we use to scan documents. This has been pretty useful to generate pdfs of our kids' artwork. The only problem is that if the paper is much larger than legal, or has paint on it, the scanner doesn't work that well. We have a multi-function printer for those types of documents, but it is more of a manual process on that scanner.
- pwestbro, Jun 22, 2010