It’s Saturday morning, and the house is so peaceful – it’s just me and the dog; the kids are at swimming lessons, the house is filled with the scents of bread and chocolate chip cookies. Someone recently referred to me as a “Martha Stewart” and I didn’t respond right away because I needed to figure out if that person was being sarcastic or not. Apparently she was not being sarcastic but was referring to my love of baking things; clearly she was not referring to my complete inability to perform any task that requires artistic or decorative skills. Because I’m pretty sure if Martha tried to decorate cupcakes, they would look more like edible art and less like someone visually impaired and with only one hand attacked them with frosting and sprinkles.
Also I think Martha would have a much better craft supply storage solution than put everything on top of the fridge and hope that an avalanche does not occur while cooking.
Notice the various crafts and colouring pages.
The fridge is generally covered with three or four layers of paper at any given time.
As should be obvious by this point, I have one child who is really into crafts and colouring, and one who is sort of into crafts and colouring, with the result that the house is overflowing with art. So here’s my question: what does one do with it all? I have two giant containers in the basement where I keep a LOT of it, but eventually I smuggle piles out to the recycle bin. So what do you do with all of your children’s art, and how do you decide what to keep? While I’m at it, how do you deal with clutter?
I have no children who are interested in crafts or colouring (with the exception of one beluga whale picture) so I can’t totally relate. However, I think I would probably pick and choose the art that I kept. If you kept everything you would drown in the paper. I think one file box of art by the time the child moves out is really all that’s necessary to be kept. I don’t actually have any art that survived childhood and I’m alright so maybe a file box is even too much.
BTW, I’m glad you re-subscribed to my feed. It was pretty upsetting to find out that I lost almost 90% of my feed subscribers by making the switch to WordPress. I followed instructions to keep subscribers but I either did the switch wrong or the instructions were bogus. Nothing like starting again.
I’m so glad to see that I’m not the only one with a fridge that looks like it might implode due to the load of paper and magnets attached to it! I figure it’s just part of having young kids. Gotta love it!
I sometimes take pictures of the art (some of my friends scan it) I also save a few important pieces and (The things I think are their best work) then recycle the rest. I also tape the pictures to all my cupboards. My kitchen looks like a gigantic art gallery. And yes, I agree if children live in your home attractive is no longer an option.
I agree with the taking pictures of the art, keeping them on your computer and tossing the originals. If you’d like to, you can even print these pictures into books later on – say one per year or so. 🙂
My friend bought a cable that she attached to her basement wall and got some clothes pin type things to attach the work to. She set up one for each of her 5 kids and told them that they can hang their artwork up there to display. When the wire is full, they need to choose something to take down to put up the new thing that they want to add. I think it’s a great idea, but I haven’t asked her how it’s going, so I don’t know if it works. 🙂