Getting Organized:
In your Home and Homeschool
Dear Friends,
Someone asked me to write about my children’s artwork and keepsakes. How do I know what to keep and what to toss?
With six children, I have to be careful with how much of their school work I keep. I have found that when they grow up and move out, they don’t always take their keepsake boxes with them. (smile)
When we do our school work, I toss worksheets fairly often. Usually, I toss them weekly, but with my high schoolers, it is more like monthly. If they write a paper that I want to keep, I put it in a binder for that school year. Most of our work is done on the computer, so it is just saved there.
If they have a notebook or binder for a subject, such as science, I leave their lab sheets and worksheets in there for the school year. During the summer, I will clean these out and toss most of it. Occasionally, I will keep a diagram.
During our years in 4-H, each of the children made project books yearly. I still have all of these in a crate. There are not a lot of them, and they fit nicely where I have them stored. A lot of effort went into the project books, and I kept any ribbons or awards they won in each booklet.
We have done a lot of hands on learning and created a lot of projects. For some of these, I kept the project intact, but for most of them, I have pictures of the project on my computer. It’s fun to look back at those projects and pictures, but they do not take up a lot of space in my house.
In my school cabinet, I have a drawer that holds some artwork from each child. It’s not a huge stack, but it is the stuff that makes me happy to go back and look at from time to time.
When I pull out my Christmas decorations, I have a couple of boxes of hand-made ornaments. I cherish these and enjoy the memories that come back to me each year as I go through these boxes.
You can enjoy your children’s artwork and projects, but you do not have to keep every single thing they make. First, toss the easy stuff, like worksheets. You don’t want to take up valuable storage space with math worksheets.
Then, go through your children’s artwork. Establish a place to keep the special items. Take pictures of everything. You can have one memory box for you, or you can set up boxes for each child. That is a personal choice you need to make.
Share some of your children’s artwork with friends and family. That is a way to bless someone else with your child’s efforts, and it is a way of making your child feel special to brighten someone else’s day.
Do any of you have a special way you store your children’s artwork?
Today’s Zone Mission is to declutter in the interior area of your entryway. This may be your launch pad area.
Your Home Blessing for today is to declutter paper and magazines.
My menu plan for Thursday is sweet and sour chicken and a salad.
Have a great day!
