As Mom’s we treasure and cherish all the momentous moments in our children’s lives, but we also want to remember the small things too, right? Like that adorable painting they did in Kindergarten, or the first time they aced a spelling test. Not only do WE want to remember, but we want to give them a chance to look at their accomplishments as adults. But storing all of those school papers is downright impossible… and finding a system to keep safe the ones you do keep is not the easiest task. 

My son came home on his last day of Kindergarten laden down with a book bag FULL of school work and artwork. He had been coming home like this the last few days of school… and he wanted to keep it ALL. Normally I pull out a few choice pieces, the stuff I classify as their best work, and I stash it in a plastic tote in the basement. No rhyme or reason. All the children’s work gets shoved in together. But he REALLY wanted to organize his and make it into a book… so I started brainstorming and came up with this system, which works perfectly for us.
I picked up three boxes that were the perfect size for schoolwork (they fit 2-3 grades worth of work) and I also grabbed some manila folders.  Each box was labeled with the child’s name. I then separated out the huge mess of paperwork by child (with some help from Cassidy) – that’s 9 years of accumulated stuff right there!

Next I separated it by age/grade. Each section was then placed into a manila folder and placed inside the box. Of course I couldn’t just put in a plain old manila folder, so I designed an “ALL ABOUT ME” sheet that I can fill out for each grade and paste to the front of the folder. I’ve made the sheet available as an 8.5×11 free download via Google Drive. 
 
From now on I have a dedicated place for each child’s work.
I’ll continue to keep only their best work, but instead of shoving it into a catch all, I will place it into the manila folder with the corresponding grade! It keeps the papers safe and makes it easy to look through.

These boxes I got for free, but I may pick up three  plastic hanging file folder totes (something similar to these) to keep everything air tight and water proof. I have also used Artkive, an app where you take a picture of your child’s artwork and it gets stored on your device. I like this idea as well, but I also want to make sure to have hard copies because it is just more fulfilling to hold these memories in your hand!

And of course I still have our artwork display station I made a few years back:

 
So tell me, how do you store your child’s artwork/schoolwork through the years?
Happy Creating! ~Kim
Kim is a Marketing Director by day and Crafter/Blogger/Blog Designer by night. She lives with her husband, three beautiful children, and shih-tzu, Mushu. You can also visit her design site, seven thirty three – – – creative blog design.  For even more seven thirty three fun, like her on Facebook or follow along via Twitter!