I have this daughter
she is small and very funny (sorry--i really like Charlie and Lola)
She is very artsy and a pack rat.
I have no idea where she gets it from.
She draws pictures on everything. Her spelling test gets a beautiful rainbow on it...her math homework...my bills....all get a beautiful works of art. Art that she can not throw away. Or art that I throw away and she fishes out of the garbage.
When she started school we ran into a problem. We had a giant oak tree worth of paper in our house.
So I took a box (a big box--a boot box) and wrapped it up cute
and then I put it on her shelf.
Any thing she brought home or colored or drew or created went in the box.
And at the end of the year she goes through it and makes a trash pile and a keep pile (when you are facing 15 rainbow pictures it is easy to pick a favorite and throw some away!
notice the vacuum cord!!!
Whatever makes the keep pile gets a place in her Jordan book.
I have been keeping this since she started to doodle
it's my collection of all of my most favorite drawings. It's fun to look back and see how far her skill has come!
Just some things that help control the chaos!!
I totally do a VERY similar thing. (as did my mother before me!) I think it is genius and the only way to control junk vs. actual memorabellia. And mostly...I just want to say that we love Charlie and Lola too. And i have 2 kids. One older, boy and one younger, girl. I pretend that they ARE Charlie and Lola. But their accents need some work. We've got the "tomato" thing down. But now we need to work on calling elevators "lifts".
ReplyDeleteI LOVE this idea! My daughter does the same thing with all her works of art! If she sees the multiples of them it would be so much easier to get rid of some (hopefully) I will have to put this plan into action! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteA few months I had my daughter sorting through her drawings, and as the "keep" pile stacked higher and higher, I heard her exclaim, "Why am I SUCH a good artist?!?"
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely love your blog! I am so excited to follow along! =)
ReplyDeleteI love the book idea! I might have to steal that one! We already have the box but at age 4 - I haven't yet made her clean it out! LOL Great idea - thanks for sharing!! :)
ReplyDeleteMy mom saved a TON of my artwork and I'm going to be downright honest here: I don't really care about it the way that my mom would. I'm admitting here that I threw a whole bunch away...mostly because yes, it is cool to look at for about 5 seconds and then...well it's just something I made when I was 5. SOOOOO.... in our house, when there is something special that my kids or I would like to keep- we photograph it! we take pictures and then we throw the projects away...4x6 photos take up such a small space!!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is a really good idea that I need to start implementing. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteOh I love that artsy girl that is my other daughter! :) Great idea btw!
ReplyDeletei LOVE this! i have 2 little girls who think every drawing is a major keepsake na is "special to my heart" i usually just throw it out when they arent looking but THIS is a much better idea!
ReplyDelete~selina
sisters4saymoreismore.blogspot.com
That is a fabulous idea - creative, and neat. I on the other hand have a pile of papers from the end of school that I still have to sort through. sigh...
ReplyDeleteBTW, love the photo in your header - you're a clever lady!
I love the notebook idea! My daughter constantly draws all over our stuff as well and I have a file folder in the drawer for her. Its starting to make it impossible to put anything else in the file cabinet though so I like all these ideas!! Thanks for the inspiration! :)
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