Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Clutter or Treasure?!?

Children's artwork and homework. What do you keep and what do you throw away?

I'm an anti-clutter fanatic (at least according to Lance!!!!) I don't like clutter (except in my office) I can only look at things a couple of days without it driving me crazy. So....my plan for all the kids' projects? I go thru them and keep my absolute favorites. You know the ones that show what a genius they were that they could draw a floorplan of our house at age 5 (N actually did this!) or that they could do fingerpainting that should hang on the walls at MOMA. I only keep a select few - it's the only way to keep my sanity. But...if you choose this way of living, you must be very, very careful. If said geniuses discover their masterpieces in the trashcan, it's not good. Not good at all. So, in the middle of the night, I carefully sneak out to the garbage can and carefully place the "rejects" at the bottom of the trash, so that I'm not discovered. Does this make me a terrible mom?!?

I bring this up because I recently had lunch with a friend who is in the process of cleaning out 20 years of her children's stuff. She has an entire room filled with their stuff and is really struggling with the enormity of the task. I feel for her - it would depress me greatly. And I don't want to be in her place in a few years. I have other issues to deal with.

Anyone out there have a great solution for keeping memorable items without having to rent a storage unit to keep them in?!?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I read about a mom who scanned art work to the computer and kept things in a file there. It is hard to know what to keep and what to save. It is good to keep a few things for the future. Decide to keep one plastic storage box--as it fills up whitte it down again. After 1st grade there are fewer things to save and less important to the kiddos.

Becky said...

I have a plastic tote for each child-their "Memory Box". Special baby things are saved in each. Along with some things they've made and schoolwork. I esp. keep things with handprints and footprints, and usually things made for Mother's Day. When J started school, soooooo many papers came home. You can't keep every handout ever done! I agree, just the really stand out art works, great writing papers as they progress and show how their skills are growing, super fantastic grades on things they've struggled with. Just can't keep it all!!
I hide my throw-aways too!!! Can't hurt their feelings!!!

circus of love said...

scanning is a good idea though I haven't done it yet. A friend of mine who has her own home organization business takes a digital picture of her child holding the amazing artwork. Then not only do you remember the masterpiece but what the artist looked like at the time.
I am thinking I will do this. You could even take an upclose of the document rather than scanning...just seems faster to me.

Becky said...

OH, I appreciate your friend's comment on taking pics of them holding their things! That was told to me a while back and I completely forgot! Love it!
Have a fun date!