Managing Kids' Artwork
Since becoming a mom 9 years ago, the amount of paperwork and tangible kid art that comes across my counter tops has grown exponentially. I used to be really good at keeping things under control. Everything had a place in a filing cabinet and my sentimental attachment to paper was minimal. Enter kids. Suddenly, everything they touched pulled at my heartstrings. The first time they drew a person (circle, two arms, two legs, no neck...you know what I'm talking about, classic kid stuff), the second time they drew a person (yep, still attached). Name writing, sweet wiggly letters backwards and little sentences that make no sense. Finger painting creations. (Scratch that - I hate those. They're total crap). Tiny pieces of paper cut up and taped all over another piece of paper. I found myself just so attached to the memories of these creations and the messes they made making them and their little selves being proud of something. I clung to those like they were my little kids who were growing up so quickly and if I let that go, I feared I would forget about those moments.
Well...turns out, 9 years deep, hanging on to that stuff is not a sustainable practice. It gets bad. Really bad. And then comes the end of the school year and the school graciously dumps a whole other pile of work that you've never seen on you but then summer break kicks in and your kids are all up in your business and that pile just goes somewhere else to be processed some other day. And next thing you know, you haven't touched that stuff and the piles are starting to commingle and your not sure whose handwriting that is, or which kid drew that person (dammit!). The struggle is real, y'all. That has to be dealt with.
Enter technology. Now I am admittedly a bit of a technology resister still in many ways. I like to touch the fabric of clothes before I buy them. I want to sit on the couch before I buy it and I like to still hold artwork in my hands and feel the actual piece of paper my kiddo created. But I have to be practical and I have to realize that my life is only getting fuller. There are so many experiences we want to have and create, and all of those things take time. Time that I don't have to sit around going through piles of memories while tears well up remembering these little creations. And piling up of anything simply kills your spirit. No matter who you are or what is piling up. The practical thing to do is to find a solution that is a compromise. Here is what I have come up with that works. It's a balance of some tangible things and mostly documentation to help me sleep at night knowing their works of art are not lost forever once removed from their earthly state. :) Remember this mantra: "Real time with real people over things and stuff." It helps me make decisions as I go through the following steps.
1. Anything that you LOVE, take right away (or at least weekly) and write who did it and the date and even better, a little comment your kiddo can provide on the significance. I love hearing what my 4 year old says when I ask her to give her artwork a title.
2. Display it. Find a space in your home that you can dedicate to displaying kids art. Nothing fancy needed here. Kids art collected on a wall already looks interesting and creative. No frames required (but if that's your jam, do it, I just find that's hard to maintain). And let the kids know that this is a rotating space for things we love. From the design/counseling/Feng-shui perspective, this step is essential in celebrating what we love about our kids and families. This is the piece that helps your home speak.
3. When that art display fills up, you HAVE to remove an item before putting up a new one. When it is removed, it either goes into a box for that child or you take a photo, file it in a digital album on your phone with that kiddos name and let it go. Taking the photo using a consistent background will help your images feel more pulled together and album-esque.
4. For the paperwork that never makes it to the LOVE THAT! wall, try to toss immediately what you can. Take pics of what you can't just toss (again filing under that particular kiddo's album). Some tests or projects you want to hang onto for the school year can go in the box, but you have to schedule a time to process that box at the end of the year and pull out essentials and toss the rest. TRUST ME, the more you process on the front end, the better you will feel and you will thank yourself. We realistically only need a few reminders of who our children are at a certain age. Extra time isn't just going to magically appear in your life when you can sit and rummage through tons of work effectively. The overwhelm of too many memories can actually make things worse and more confusing and in the end, less effective in helping you document your kiddos.
5. Now, one caveat here is what I have deemed in our home, the Purgatory Box. My kids don't know it by this name (by design) as it is the place where things go that I just can't decide what to do with. It's also the place where kid creations go that I am absolutely ready to put out on the curb, but my kids are attached to - that nasty candy glued creation they made for school last week, for example. Ew. Some items, my kids go looking for and it's not worth the heartbreak in my home to not have it there most of the time. So, instead, it's in my Purgatory box until I've deemed it's safe enough to let go of it. Some items marinate in Purgatory for a long time depending on how many times my kids ask to see it again. I try not to let them see the contents (to avoid further attachment) rather I just disappear to a dark room and resurface with whatever they happened to remember they wanted to see again. Purgatory helps me realize that sometimes, time removed from their stuff allows me to let it go more easily when I return to it. I process the Purgatory box when it is full. It's not allowed to overflow - an easy system to keep yourself in check and make sure things aren't getting away from you. But process it alone. Don't let the kids suck things back in that they have long forgotten about.
Now, staying on top of all of the paperwork stuff is probably the biggest organization challenge for me simply because there's so much damn stuff and it's a constant flow. I can't always control when I'm going to receive an influx of kid stuff and some days, weeks, months are just too bananas to make time and it builds up so quickly. I find that carving out even just a few hours here and there to make sure I'm not getting buried in that really helps keep it under control. We do have a place where the kids all put their take home work from school. That at least keeps it corralled until I have time. But help your kids be a part of the solution. Mine are often pretty attached to their creations and schoolwork, but if you can start to instill in them the concept that they have to start differentiating between stuff they LOVE and stuff they can let go of, you are serving them well and ultimately, it should help pare things down for you in advance.
So...what has worked for you? What are your biggest hangups on this topic? If you have a great app or digital artwork storing method to share, let me know! I'd love to hear about what has worked and other ways moms process this piece.