Moms, what do you do with your children‘s creative output? I.e. pictures they have drawn, arts and crafts projects, etc.? I find it hard to throw things away and am keeping too many things. With 4 children, this is a problem (mess). What‘s your policy? E.g. do you keep things for a month and then decide what to keep and what to throw away? Do you discuss with them or just quietly let things disappear?

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We have a “art gallery wall” that features three pieces per kid (only 2 kids, so you may want to reduce). They get to pick which ones they want up. We put the top edge of the art in a wooden pants hanger and then hang them on those nice looking command hooks. That way they can hang pretty much anything and it looks nice without spending a ton of money or time.

When they want to swap something out they can put the old one in their art binder or toss it. They go through their art binders every year to clean it out, works great. We use those pocket style folders with the elastic loop closure so they can fit plenty.

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Some Good ideas on digitizing the artwork

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I just bought these cute frames from Amazon that hold kids artwork. The frames open up like a book, so you can just switch out what’s in them. Once they’re full, I’ll probably slowly throw old stuff away. But I plan to keep a few pieces in a little memory file folder m.

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I creatively input it into the garbage. The only ones I keep are the ones with their photos on it.

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Lol. I mean I throw it out so my kids don’t notice. Nothing is worse than when days after you threw something out they come asking for it.

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We make lots of plans on how to manage the artwork that comes home but first grade and preK kids. We are drowning! They send home all kinds of things and most of the paper is just activity pages. The artwork and craftwork is all kinds of things - clay, glass, beads, yarn. Not easy to just frame.

I don’t have any solutions as we haven’t been able
To stay stay on top of or continue with any of our intentions. So just solidarity momma!

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I 100% immediately toss the activity pages and random scribbles. We display maybe 1 item for a month every time they send a pack of stuff home and then that also ends in the trash unless really adorable then I’ll send it to grandma.

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I have a FB page for my kids art. I used to be really good about posting and grandparents could see everything. Not so much anymore. We have a collage wall (legit frames made them go wild), the frig, and anything else that they HAVE to save goes to a pile in my office where I'll cull it a bit before putting into an expandable envelope.

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Agreed! At my kids school, they made snow globes using clear plastic plates glued to piece of cardstock and the kids photo inside. It's so amazing but we'll need it's own method

I have one Manila folder that I keep per year. The art work, the writing, etc that looks decent or is their favorite is kept. The rest is thrown out when they aren’t looking. Now that they are 3rd and 6th grade, they like to look back at their younger folders and get excited when they see what I’ve saved (vs focusing on what I threw out).

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Unless it has like a handprint on it or is a card for Mother’s Day etc I scrap it. I’ve also heard of taking a photo of the item and then making a photo book when you’ve reached critical mass.

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My kids will absolutely care if I throw their stuff out. I let them tell me what they want to keep, and we end up with a small storage-type box each year of their art. If something is a true masterpiece, I frame it and put it in my office.

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How would you feel if you spent hours working on a project and somebody snuck up behind you and threw away all your work? That's just cruel. We sometimes forget that children are people and they have feeling too. You might think it's not a big deal - but they'll quietly resent you.

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My kids bring home a lot of stuff too and they're pretty good about sorting into "keep" and "toss". They will know if I throw it out behind their back!

We display some things for a month or two and rotate when new things come home. I make a stack that usually ends up sitting around for 1-2 months and then pick a day to go through it and decide what goes in a scrapbook. For the things that don’t make it into the scrapbook, I take photos and have an Amazon photo album for each kid where photos get uploaded and the physical items get thrown away. I also sometimes go back and look at things at the end of the school year that I felt sure we should keep and on a longer timeline discover it’s much less important that I thought in the moment.
Also, when my oldest was in a Montessori style school for a while, they had a practice of starting the school year with a blank/undecorated classroom and they’d fill up the walls with their own art and projects throughout the school year. Then at the holiday break and year end, they would take down their own work and decide what to bring home and what to “say goodbye to” (throw away or recycle). This taught them to consider the cycle of their learning and also the shared responsibility of keeping a common community space. We started doing it at home so that our kids understand we can’t keep every single thing - for cleanliness & safety, and if everything is amazing then nothing is - and it helps them learn decision-making a bit. And to someone’s point above - it’s better to communicate and let them be involved rather than try to do it without their involvement and have hurt feelings. It helps to teach them about recycling what we can as well.
And at some point I can make a book with the photos of their artwork if they want to have it in the future.

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… My husband and I often have discussions about this - he would like to let things quietly disappear, but I find it heartbreaking to just throw away things they have put a lot of effort in without giving them the chance to have a final look at it or to put their favorite items in a memory box or something.
Would really like to hear how others are dealing with this.

I've kept only a select few, have just disposed of older ones when new ones show up. I've given some of them as gifts to friends and family members (actually the kid is the one who had assigned them in giving them away as gifts). Not a lot of this though, don't want to put them in a difficult position where they feel dumped and like they shouldn't dispose of it either. But when it fits, grandparents and one or two friends have loved it and keep the art at their places.

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