Since the school year is coming to a close, you’ll probably have a ton of stuff to go through- tests, projects, papers, and artwork. Of course you want to hold on to every brilliant piece your child has created, but with one child over a span of years, this can really add up (then throw more children into the mix and before long your home can turn into a memorabilia storage facility).
Here is a great tip for those art projects from Ann Sullivan:
Artwork and Completed Arts-and-Crafts Projects
Your child may have difficulty parting with artwork, no matter how old it is. See if you can reach an agreement to display the work for an agreed upon time, perhaps six months. Then put the work in a box labeled with your child’s name, the date and the contents. At the end of the school year, go through the box and help your child decide what to keep and what to discard. Suggest taking photographs of three-dimensional and oversized objects instead of retaining the objects themselves.
Other considerations:
If your child keeps one hundred pieces of paper every year from kindergarten through twelfth grade, she will have thirteen hundred sheets of paper to store somewhere in your house. It’s hard to imagine anyone sifting through thirteen hundred sheets of paper for fun much less to find something specific. (Donna Goldberg, The Organized Student pg 204)
Summer Reading
Get ready for next year by reading Donna Goldberg’s The Organized Student.
