How to organize your kids school projects and supplies

Organizing your kids school projects and artwork

Now that the kids are out of school and home for the summer, its a great time to sort out and tidy up their pile of school papers and other memorabilia you’ve saved from the just passed school year.

Involve your kids in the process so they start learning good organizing habits. Set aside some time, maybe 1 hour in the morning after they’ve eaten breakfast to pull out all of their papers and stuff from the current school year. Gather up 3 bags: one for trash, one for recycling and one for keeping. Start by sorting through the items and make a decision on each item as you look at it. If there are particular favorites, think about whether or not you could frame it or somehow incorporate it into their bedroom decor. If they are keeping more than what the bag will hold, you will have to do another sort, getting more discerning. Only keep what fits into your container. This is a good early lesson on learning how to make good decisions about what’s important to your kids. One way to preserve the memories is to take a picture of your child with their creation. Now they can keep the picture in their scrapbook to remember the item.

You and your kids will appreciate that you took the time to go through this process each year to really pare down all those years of school projects. Once your kids are grown, they may not want all of their childhood memorabilia and will appreciate that there are not boxes and boxes to sort through to find a few special items that they may want to keep. To make this process even easier, you may want to develop a habit of going through their school projects monthly or a couple times during the school year to make it easier.

You will probably run across some school supplies in this process too. Create a “craft kit” by combining the still good supplies together in a toolkit or craft box they can use over the summer for art projects. Don’t be afraid to toss out the broken pencils or other supplies that are no longer useful. If there are a lot of supplies, consider making a donation to a local day care center.