When you have a kid in school the amount of paper that comes home is a little mind blowing. To be honest preschool was worse then kindergarten. During preschool I purchased a memory keeper (during one of their 40% off sales) one for each year. That wasn’t practical for the long term though. With 2 kids and 14 years of school I don’t want to purchase 28 memory keepers and store 28 of them! To help rid out home of the paper clutter I have started photographing all of the memorable items that come home from school. I set up a large white drawing pad on the floor next to our north facing sliding glass door with my pile of papers each month and photograph everything. Quick and easy. I store them digitally in folders based on grade. After everything is photographed I pick out a few favorites and the rest gets thrown away. Yes you heard me, thrown in the garbage. This can only be done while my son is at school because if he ever knew I actually through it away his little heart would be crushed.
There are a ton of great ideas that you can do with kids artwork once it has been photographed. I love the idea of a mini-masterpiece book or you can create a poster sized print with the mini art pieces. I haven’t decided exactly what I’ll do, but I feel so much better not drowning in paper clutter. Here is an example of how it looked once photographed.
Out of this patch I kept the bottom project which was a self-portrait.
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