Best Ideas for Organizing School Papers, Art & Cards

okey, dokey! A very smart mom once told me her method: she stores it all each school year in a plastic tub. In May, right around Mother's Day, she goes thru the stash & fills a 3-ring binder with the "keepers". She either hole-punches the papers ....or uses clear protectors for the really unique papers. Her criteria for "keepers" was that it had to reflective of her child's creativity....a story, a few sentences, or artwork. She also kept the best of the tests....& the worst. All worksheets were eliminated....

I have tried to use her method & it works well. I have also found that I can combine multiple years into one binder....simply because as time passes, I don't feel the need to keep as much!

We have totes for each kid and everything that we are going to keep for them goes into that. Once I year I filter that out also. Then when they graduate Im planning on having it displayed to show the different things from each year.

As for the cards for myself I have them in a shoe box sitting on the closet shelf.

For the school papers etc. Each year she had a rubber made tote. At the end of the year she went through it dnd picked a few of her favorite. They then went into a file box. The larger art pieces went into a cardboard Portfolio..

Towards the end of her school years we began scanning these things and many of her essays etc.. were on the computer.

One year I made copies of some of her artwork and made a book.. another year I had a group of them made into Thank you Cards,

Sort through the pile for each year and select your favorites. Then scan them, put them in a photo book (like you can do on Shutterfly) and get rid of most of the originals.