A new Decluttering task will be published on the blog each Tuesday from February (during January it will be randomly as I am publishing The Back to School Series). I will share a link to the task on facebook and in the Tuesday Daily Task newsletter (subscribe to newsletter here).
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View previous Decluttering Challenge Tasks here
Decluttering Task #2
The kids artwork, drawings & creations
Reading through many of the comments on what you would like to read about during my back to school series is how to organise the kids artwork they bring home from school. At the end of the school year last year my kids came home with an abundance of drawings, projects, school books etc. I am currently working on a project, which I look forward to sharing with you soon, a new way to organise ‘things’ the kids bring home, I have also shared a few other ideas with you below as well. However todays tasks is to declutter the artwork, drawing and creations.
How to declutter the kids artwork, drawings & creations
- Go through the mountain artwork, drawings etc and keep only those that you love (be it that its bright and colourful, has a lovely sentiment or a happy memory).
- For those that you are not sure if you want to keep or purge, consider taking a photo so you will always have an image to remember it, then purge.
Scan drawings and add to a digital photo frame
Create a Wall Gallery of your favourite drawings
Please join the Declutter Challenge, I truly hope that together we can make a difference in your home
35 comments
I love the digital frame idea.
And they make great present for grandparents too!
We hang some of the artwork in frames and then take photos of the rest of the special ones. At the end of the year I (plan to) make a photo book for each child which included photos of them and their artwork. All the originals then get thrown out.
A great way to memorialise the creations!
I take photos of the all the pictures I want to keep. Then each year I create a photo book for each of my kids of their drawings. That way the kids keep their books on their bookshelves and can look at them whenever they want. The books will also become a great keepsake for them as they get older. The books are extremely good quality so they should last the test of time.
I am planning to do this with my children’s artwork, it is such a great idea. Mine might take a while though, 3 kids x several years of artwork = a big project!
Can highly recommend Shutterfly (American company). I have not found anything that compares to their quality and choices within Australia. They have regular discounts so even with postage the cost is on par with Australian one, but you get alot more!
Thanks for the tip!
Work one child at a time so as to not get them mixed up. Maybe they could help you – a trip down memory lane together!
Such a fabulous idea!
Top idea of using the digital photo frame!
And the grandparents love them too!
Eventually I plan on making a photo book of my daughter’s artwork. She’s might only be 2 but I do love her drawings 🙂 For now I have a special Kikki K folder that I use to store her drawings 🙂
It’s such a fun journey seeing their drawing evolve into recognisable images, definitely worth remembering!
As the kids move into school, the abundance of artwork and schoolwork magnifies. When taking pics of artwork, place in a well lit corner. Add an index card with the child’s name, grade, and year(in dark perm. marker) so you can refer back when adding it to a scrapbook. This way, you can put more than one piece together. I saved something from the first and last day of school, anything with handprints/footprints, a special writing, and one or two items from every subject. You can reduce in size as well. Don’t forget to save something with a bad grade if your kids are really strong athletes!
Great tips, thanks!
I have been taking photos of my kids artwork and now that my daughter is in grade 5, school projects and the like. I’ve started a photo book which i will print and give to her as a graduation from Primary School gift. I’ll do the same for my son (he’s 4) and i’ve started taking the photos. At least we have the memory but not the item to store!!
Oh what a beautiful idea! Such a treasure for them!
My kis are all grown up but these ideas sound great and I will be able to use some of them as I sort our their belongings before I get too old to do it.
I’m sure they would love to see them all again!
Love all the ideas and comments. I also take photos of kids’ works…then use some really nice ones (paintings, drawings) as book covers or gift wraps!
What a brilliant idea! The grandparents would love that!
These are all handy hints! My baby boy starts daycare on Monday so I look forward to putting some of these into practice. thanks Katrina.
Madonna
My pleasure! Good luck with it all x
I absolutely love the digital picture frame idea!! Such a great idea to keep the kids artwork alive without cluttering your house! Thanks Kat!
They also make great presents for grandparents – you can find digital frames fairly cheaply and then you just copy the memory cards!
Great post, another option is the artkive app, a friend recently put me onto it, would be especially helpful for those with multiple children’s art to keep track of. http://www.artkiveapp.com
I use a lot of them as wrapping paper for family and special friends.
As an adult, I still enjoy creating art pieces and part of my art appreciation is to see brush strokes / palette knife marks / finger prints, etc, so scanning a piece of art work and displaying it in a digital photo frame is a wonderful idea. My Mum and Dad kept a selection of my childhood art work and one that had been pinned to the door as a child was taken down when I was 37 years of age and placed in my Mum’s coffin with her. Some of my parents friends (who had seen the picture for 30 years) thought this was lovely but sad. For me it felt right, I had drawn it for my Mum and it belonged to her 🙂
I’ve bee using the photo/scan trick for a few years now-the kids are really fine with letting go of the artwork as they are so used to digital media these days. Plus all my family are scattered worldwide, so I sent a digital frame a few years ago and send the a fresh USB each year with family photos, artwork, etc to enjoy! Everyne is a winner!
My daughter is only 2 and a half, so she doesn’t have a lot of artwork yet, but we have started a scrapbook to keep track of when she made things, like pictures or cards. But I think the scanning/digital frame idea is terrific, especially as her paternal grandparents are on the other side of the country.
I had a big pink scrapbook (this is for my 4 year old daughter)
and it has a “frame” on the cover where you can put a photo
of your child, instead I took some pretty paper and on it
and wrote her name and the year/her age then under it I wrote
Artwork. Then inside I put all “my favorite” drawings (really
hard to pick favorites). Some I cut/cropped so I could fit more,
I pasted them to pretty paper and did it just like you would
scrapbook photos (I let my daughter help me with some page too)
I also have smaller scrapbooks and have one per person in my family
(My husband & I share one but you can do separate ones) and I fill
them until full with birthday and holiday cards. I also have bigger
scrapbooks per person where I put keep sakes and things like movie tickets, miniature golf score sheets, tickets/wristbands of places we went, fortune cookie papers, birthday/holiday cards, report
cards, ribbons they won, a couple of their favorite artwork, etc.
I also have one for my husband& I that is not by the year but full
of things through the years like birthday/anniversary/random cards
that we give each other, love notes or just little brief notes,
things I saved from dates (like what I mentioned above for the
kids), etc. I started it with when we were dating then did an
engagement page with pictures of it, the ring, etc. Then continued
on until when we got married and I did a couple pages for that then
continued till anniversary where I did both pages for that,
continued till I was pregnant and did one page for that & the other
for the birth (I have all that stuff in the scrapbooks I did for
each kid but you can do it how you like) then I’d continue till
The next anniversary or pregnancy pages and so on. You can put
a long (or multiple shorter) shelf hanging in the living/family room or the main room where you enter/exit your home..although
I personally prefer a main hallway, I have a long shelf hung up
in the hallway that leads to our bedrooms & later I will add
another long one either right next to the first, as if attached,
or under the 1st one, or on the adjacent wall. You can always put
shelves in each bedroom with each kid having just theirs and then
have yours (or spouse & you) in your bedroom. There really are
a lot of options &/or tweaks that you can have fun with! Sorry so
long, I got way to into this & got carried away 😉 But I do LOVE
the digital frame idea & it would make awesome gifts!! This site
Really gets me motivated and more creative. Thank You!
Hi Natasha, Wow fantastic idea. Very creative.
I make snapfish photobooks for each child. When each piece comes home, it is photographed on black cardboard, then either discarded or used as wrapping. Each child is allowed to keep 4 pieces each per year. I’ve created a folder on my computer desktop for each child’s artwork photos. When I get a chance, I upload them to snapfish.com.au & insert into their photobook. Easy to do, much more compact, memories are accessible & they can refer to and keep it for life 🙂
I love this idea, Lyndal!.:)