Arts and Crafts Solutions {Spring Cleaning}

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This past August marked the beginning of our first child’s “school” days, but if you know anything about me, you know the arts and crafts have been going on for quite some time. In fact, I feel guilty because I’m fairy certain we started handprint crafts at around 10 months with Wyatt, and I haven’t so much kept up with John. We are getting there slowly; he’s just a much more on-the-move kiddo.

Regardless, we craft several times a week around here. Whether you are crafting at home or your kids bring it home from elsewhere, dealing with their masterpieces most likely puts you in one of these categories :: the hoarder, the purger, the displayer, or the organizer.

I personally love hanging them up around the house. I want to show my kids that I value what they create, and it’s nice to have up for conversations with Daddy. I’ve kept my favorites in a box for a while now.  Knowing I have clutter tendencies combined with the fact that I can’t duplicate the sheer amount of paper year after year and have a place to store.

I once again consulted with our great contributors, and together we are here to offer 5 storage solutions for kid masterpieces.

Weed Out

We don’t come up with as much artwork as some who go to school daily, and Wyatt’s teachers are pretty good about decorating  their classroom with their work, so our weekly accumulation isn’t so bad. Our working mom contributor Sarah showed me what her children come home with weekly though and offered a few suggestions for avoiding a paper overload.

• Grab a few highlight items of the week for the fridge {perhaps holiday related}.
• Talk with your child about the pieces and hang up one that he/she gravitates toward.
• Throw out {or mail to grandparents!} leftover pieces before they suck you into the must-keep-me vortex!

Give Away

Especially around the holidays, I plan lots of our crafts around cards that we can send to grandparents, Godparents, and even our service men and women overseas.  This way we accomplish a bit of learning through “Preschool at Home”, but also keep our walls a bit less cluttered. And we all know how much family and friends love getting mail from our littles.  Outside of holiday crafts and cards, I love cutting up freestyle paintings or colorings and creating homemade notecards to send for birthday or Christmas gifts and passing on the art of sending thank-you notes.

Display

Pinterest has given me idea after idea for creative ways to display art around the house. As I mentioned, I love having it up as a representation of our family and times spent together.  Months ago I actually “pinned there, DID that” and created these burlap frames to hang a few pieces in our breakfast area. The three frames very quickly became too little in space for our work, so I recently purchased the popular wire hanger for our play area where I can hang more. I should have even considered layering several wires! Both Tiffanie and Sarah hang art this way as well, and it seems to be a great go-to method.

Box Up

Both Kelly and Meagan suggested these portfolios for long-term storage. I recently went through the boxes {and boxes} of my own masterpieces that my mom was ready to pass along. I can’t see my boys wanting a ton of their own work in the future, but there’s definitely something about looking back at the work you did as a child. These seem like a great way to hold on to just enough instead of keeping everything. As children grow, a fun end of the year activity would be pulling out their favorite masterpieces for storing.

Repurpose

I’ve taken to this last category as the one for our family in terms of artwork storage. While I might keep a few pieces here and there, I think our best bet is to hang onto these memories in the most downsized fashion possible. Before I get into how I plan to do that, let me also suggest a couple of other options.

Consider laminating a few favorite pieces and use as placemats for meals or even Play Doh mats. This would be especially fun for seasonal art. Another option might be to create a keepsake box to store artwork, pictures, your favorite mementos.

An alternative might be using Shutterfly, Snapfish, or your favorite photography service to create a calendar to use at home or give as gifts. Once the images are scanned, you will always have them to repurpose however you choose.

I’ve recently started the process of creating a photo book from the favorite pieces of artwork I’ve collected over the last three years. In researching I’ve come across an app called ArtKive that streamlines the process of creating a photo book from your child’s art from the convenience of your phone. I personally prefer to exercise my own creative muscles and plan to use Shutterfly to create our first book. This way I can group pictures as I want and use several images per page. I’m even eying the Mini Masterpieces theme just for this occasion.  I plan to take a note or two from these sites in putting our book together:

• Photographing Children’s Artwork gives insight about  light and shadows that this amateur needs.
• Creating a Photo Book Time Capsule via Mixbook gives tips on themes and layouts.
• How to Make a Child’s Artwork Memory Book offers further suggestions for making the most of your photo book.

With materials gathered and a few minutes of snapping pictures each afternoon in the sunlight coming through the windows, I’m ready to tackle the pile of kid masterpieces we have created so far and stay on top of it in months to come.

Hopefully I can create photo books yearly and keep a few special pieces. After all, when your kids are grown and in houses of their own, you’ve got to have something to pawn off on them for storage right?

What are your favorite ways to keep the clutter at bay yet hold on to these precious pieces of your child’s life?

[hr] Please Note :: We are so thankful to have Kid to Kid Houston Galleria sponsoring our ‘Spring Cleaning :: Out With the Old, In With the New’ series!  As you are deep cleaning and decluttering your house this spring, we encourage you to check out their amazing resale store down in the heart of Houston.  While there, you can sell all of your unwanted kid’s stuff…and then buy the things that you need!

Kid to Kid Houston Galleria

1737 Post Oak Boulevard

Houston, TX 77056

713.622.2545