If you’ve got school-age kids, they probably just had their last day of school or are about to. Either way, chances are good you’ve just had a huge influx of paper, or are going to within a few days. (And if your kids are still little, you can use this time of year as an excuse to deal with any of your own paper piles).
While I’m usually ruthless about excess paper, banishing unneeded stuff within hours (sometimes minutes) of it entering the house, the end of the school year often throws my system into a tailspin. There’s just so MUCH of it, all coming home at once: nine months’ worth of tests and research papers, mixed with registration forms for summer camps and sports, art projects, half-full notebooks, random folded and wadded papers.
It’s tempting to just throw it all in a closet to deal with next year, but do I really want to bog down my start-of-summer mojo by looking at piles of paper haphazardly stacked all over the house? I think not. I don’t know about you, but I like my summers to be breezy, easy, and unencumbered by clutter.
Since I believe that any system that works is a great one (and for myself, the simpler the better), the process of taming the torrent of school paperwork starts by asking yourself a few questions.
What sorting system will you use?
I have two stacks: recycle and keep. The “keep” pile goes right into the bin I have for schoolwork and other memorabilia. I tell the kids all the rest is going in the recycle bin and they will have a few days to glance at it and make sure I’m not tossing a treasure. They very rarely bother to look…obviously they are less attached to the idea of schoolwork-as-memento than I am.
What will be your criteria for keeping kids’ schoolwork?
My criteria is that the paper must make me smile. That means that the “A” spelling test is far more likely to get tossed in the recycle bin than the B- research paper with the clever title or endearing misspelling. If it doesn’t feel like it represents my child’s unique personality–something we’ll treasure down the road as a snapshot in time–it goes bye-bye.
What will you do with things you want to keep?
I usually manage to scale it down to a pretty slender stack of “keepers” and those all get tossed in a tote together. One day, I’ll sort them out by child. But right now, I’d rather save the space by storing them all together-labeled with their names, of course. Perhaps the fact that I have several years’ worth of three kids’ schoolwork stored in one bin and it’s not full yet is a testament to how little schoolwork I save.
Getting those counters and shelves cleared off will help you dive into a relaxed summer. So take a few minutes to think about what system will work best for you…and then go to work implementing it! And please, share your answers to the above questions here to inspire readers who are trying to dig out from under their own piles of paper!
In our storage room, I have a large Rubbermaid tote for each child and I toss the keepers in there. Like you, I try to just keep the ones that make me smile, but I still keep far too much. Evidence: I just had to start a second tote for my 12yr-old. But I guess 2 totes for a full childhood of memories on paper isn’t too bad, right? 🙂
I also use Rubbermaid totes for my kids’ keppers. Unfortunately, they DO get very attached to stuff (and notice that I tend to put most of what comes home in their backpacks directly into the recycling bin), so they will usually proactively tell me what things they want saved. Then I might pick a few more. We also hang particularly interesting/good/endearing artwork on our three-season porch and our basement stairwell. I have a pretty high standard for those, so the space fills up slowly and it makes a very nice display!
We have this problem all year long as it comes home immediately. So there wasn’t a huge end of year stack… which I almost think would be easier! Instead I feel like every couple of weeks I find stacks of crap all over my house.
What I do is try to recycle as much of the boring stuff (work sheets, etc – mine are still in younger grades). I do save the special ones and have a big stack in the art cabinet we have. I think what I did last summer was move that stack into one small rubbermaid, so I need to do the same with this years…. I have the kids mixed togtether for now (2 in school, 2 toddlers) so I know at one point we’ll have to sort it out better – and maybe do a second round of decidign what to keep.
One tip I can share that I’ve started doing with the art work is to take pictures of it with my digital camera. My 5yo is the budding artist and I just can’t save every picture – so this works really well. But then again… it is scary how many digital pictures we have taken in the last 7 years… they are sorted by year/mo automatically but I know at some point we are going to have to pare it down to make it more manageable to view them.
Also wanted to add that my mom was a saver — she gave me 3 boxes (dress shirt size – back when they were really sturdy) full of school work from preK through middle school. I treasure these boxes!!!!
I have a plastic bin made for files with legal sized hanging file folders labeled, one for each year from preschool to grade 12, for each kid. After I sort into keep/recycle, I (theoretically!) file their school photos, work samples, mementos in there to one day be used for scrapbooking! This idea is straight from Stacey Julian à la Library of Memories! Like you Meagan, I keep what makes me smile and reflects my child’s personality. If I’m really organized (which is rare!) I note the date and what it meant to me or the story behind it on the back.