The Paper Dump

The end of the school year is here; let the summertime fun begin! Another year of learning and growing is in the rear-view mirror. The kiddos have been bringing home worksheets, reports, artwork, event flyers and more all year long, evidence of a jam-packed academic year.  But wait there’s more! Along with the year-end celebrations, students are tasked with emptying out their desks, lockers, and cubbies. It’s time to take down the artwork that adorned the walls of the classroom and school hallways. Paper, paper, and more paper!

What to do with it all? If you’ve already created a system to wrangle it into some semblance of order, great! If not, this is a good time to get started.

Set the Ground Rules

With the quantity of incoming papers throughout the school year, it is super helpful to have a plan for how to manage it all. It can be difficult to choose what to keep and what to let go, and especially hard when kids are in their earliest education years. However, paper, just like any other item in your home, needs to be invited to stay and given a place to live, so a few ground rules will help to establish the residency criteria.

Reviewing the year’s schoolwork is a project often shared by parents and children, although your own family circumstances will determine if this is a group venture. Some kids are much less attached than their parents to their writings and elementary works of art. In that case, your recycling bin will be filled in no time, and it’s off to summer fun! While it is simply not practical to keep every piece of paper, alas, some will tug at your heartstrings so the rules you set may be more for your benefit than the kids’. The guidelines you set will support your efforts to maintain paper order, so be clear about how to apply them.

For instance, your decisions can be based on content or skill level. You may choose to keep the first and last writings of the school year to show the progression of handwriting, and in later school years, the development of a story or subject matter. Or your child may offer some insights about favorite assignments that trigger whether they are important enough to keep. Selecting pieces based on objective criteria can help move the process along. It’s not all business, though, so have some fun with it.

Preserving Picasso

Kids’ artwork may pose more of a challenge because everything is just so darn cute.  Like other memorabilia or sentimental items, the favorites will organically rise to the top. That may narrow down the choices quite a bit. Apply the same rule as handwriting to artwork; keep pieces that show change in development or a particular style. Or you could allow yourself to keep X number of pieces. Period.

Any 3D artwork, especially those created in the early years, that include beads, yarn, acorns, buttons, macaroni, or other art-enhancing objects most likely will become unglued over time. This is largely dependent on the storage system so be cautious, especially in areas that are not temperature controlled. What is special enough to keep today, may disintegrate (or become fodder for pests) leaving you no choice but to dispose of it later. There are preservation services that specialize in children’s artwork. Artkive and PlumPrint are two popular options.

Share and Save the Love

Choices abound for storing and sharing schoolwork. This storage may be very long term, so again, keep in mind how the location and materials used can affect the condition of what is being stored. These ideas will get you started.

1.       Assign each student a labeled box or bin. The contents can be further categorized by grade-level. Portfolio-style storage can function the same way.

2.       Recycle artwork into greeting cards, gift wrap and tags, calendars, or use in other craft projects.

3.       Photograph or scan and create digital files or albums. The idea here is, once the work is digitized, there is no need to keep the original.

Remember when we thought the world was going paperless? It didn’t. With a plan in place to handle the precious plethora of schoolwork proudly presented by your kiddos, you can enjoy it for years to come.

Artwork by Vincent Patsios