By contributing writer Angie
If you are a parent of a child who is currently or has ever been a prolific artist, you know the pain of not knowing what to do with all of those creations. It can feel callous to throw away projects that have been worked on with loving care. Plus, you run the risk of being found out by your child, unless you can bury all of those papers deep enough in the trash.
However, you also can’t allow papers to take over your home. There has to be a solution. As a way to keep the peace, hold on to precious memories, and maintain a clean house, you can choose one or more of these storage solutions for children’s art work.
Storage Solutions for Children’s Art
Use a Three Ring Binder for Favorite Art Pieces
Corral all of your children’s favorite art pieces into a three ring binder with page protectors. This makes it easy to slip in new art pieces, while also making it possible to look through all of the art to see a progression of skills. In order to not fill the binder too quickly, you could limit additions to one favorite per day or per week. If you have multiple children, you can decide whether to keep all of their art together in one binder or keep separate binders for each child.
Scan or Take Pictures of Art Work
Just as eBooks are a popular way to limit the number of physical books in your home, making a digital file of your child’s art work not only saves you space at home, but it also offers many options for how to use them later. You can load the files onto your computer or tablet to use for slide shows and screen savers. It also makes it easy to share art work with relatives that live far away.
Taking pictures of art work makes it possible to store a memory of three dimensional projects as well. When my daughter couldn’t stop making creations with pipe cleaners, taking pictures would have offered an easy way to remember these creations without having to store them all forever.
Have Pictures of Art Work Made into a Book
Instead of just storing the digital files of your child’s art on your computer or tablet, you can also have pictures printed into a book each year or every few years, if you limit the pictures you choose to publish. A number of online photo developers also offer an option for photo books, so your favorite photo developer may already have options that would work for you! A book like this could be a precious keepsake in the future.
Store Flat Pieces in Pizza Boxes
If you get to know your local pizza establishment well enough, you can ask them if you can have a few clean pizza boxes for this project. If you don’t feel comfortable asking for them, you might even offer to see if you can buy a couple. Pizza boxes are a great size for storing all sorts of flat art work that your child produces. If you are worried about making the storage archival safe, you can purchase archival safe flat boxes at many storage related stores.
What are your favorite ways to store or display your children’s art work or special papers?
Kristen - Art History Mom says
Thank you for the tips! I have three small children and we do lots of art projects so I have to confess (don’t tell my mother-in-law) that I throw away quite a bit of their artwork. I love the idea of recording the artwork in digital format and creating a book.
Chantel says
Nice ideas, I especially like the ones about pizza boxes and e-books. I also used to use some of them in scrapbooking when I still had the time to do it.
Heather says
I give each of my children a plastic bin about 9x12x2 designed for storing papers with a clip on lid. They sell them for a few dollars at Walmart in the storage section. My kids get to decide what they want to keep (I save a few of my favorites each year elsewhere). When the bin gets full, THEY decide what to throw away and what to keep.
Also, I encourage my children to give some away: send them to Grandma, make them into cards for friends/neighbors, etc.