WFMW - The Artwork Clutter Solution

My boys love to draw. And when you have 4 boys over 9 years making lots of drawings, that adds up to ALOT of paper. Some drawings are delightful and unique, and worth holding on to, while others are just silly doodles or failed attempts at... no one really remembers what anymore. I have read so many ideas on how to organize, cull, preserve and otherwise keep up with the large amount of children's artwork we've amassed. And no matter what, it still gets overwhelming. I won't even go into the amount of print/copy paper I've had to buy to keep them supplied.

My first method of organizing was a tall dresser, a normal 5-drawer type that was handed down to us. The drawers were organized - one for art supplies, one for blank paper, one for coloring books, and the last two for completed artwork. When the bottom drawers got full, I'd do the dreaded toss - going through all of the artwork and trying to determine what was keepsake and what was, well, not. I could only do this once the kids were sleeping because it invariably ended up in tears and hurt feelings... no fun for anyone. Not to mention it was really hard for me, as I am a natural packrat and have trouble throwing away old receipts much less my child's precious time and effort displayed as a big brownish-black mass of fingerpainting without determinable shape.

So, then I tried to put the resonsibility more on them - I bought Sterilite drawers specifically for paper, like such:
one labeled for each boy. They were to put their artwork into their drawer, and when it got full, it was THEIR jobs to determine which creations were their favorites and which could be tossed.

Ummm... yeah. THAT never happened. Failure #2.

Then Joel got this for his birthday:
Did you hear the same angelic chorus that I did when I looked at it and got my super duper idea? Self-contained paper?! What genius came up with this?! Obviously, its not the first time I've seen a sketch pad, but all of the sudden that proverbial light bulb came on when I realized I was looking at the perfect solution to my artwork woes.

So off I went to the store to get 3 more for the other boys. At about $4 a piece, $16 total for replacements won't hurt us too badly. At first I thought they'd fill one up fast (each one has 70 pages, or 140 front and back) - my one concern was that I'd be buying new ones each month - that's 48 sketch books a year filling our house! But its been 3 months since we first got them and only Joel has needed a replacement (he's our resident artist).

Some awesome benefits to using sketchpads to keep artwork contained:

1. The artwork is contained, no more skattered loose sheets everywhere.
2. No more running out of printer paper because little artists steal it
3. An easy and fun way to see how each child's artwork has progressed - Nathan's scribbles which have now turned into his first impressions of people are all captured for posterity
4. The paper is thick, so they can use pencil, crayon, marker and even paint, without worry about it ruining the pages below. Unless they go too crazy with their rinsing water while painting, which has happened.
   
5. Easy for me to keep and store - each child has a storage file box for each school year - the sketch pads are labeled with the year and put into the file box with their other school work memorabilia
6. If they want to give someone a picture, the pages have the serrated edge to make them easy to tear out, not to mention they'll be giving a picture on higher quality paper
   
7. No more organizing needed - trying to guess who drew what, what it might be, if its a preschool version of a Picasso and unknowingly incredibly valuable...
   
8. I no longer have to do the dreaded "sort and toss". A big hurray! from everyone!

Sketchpads. They Work For Me! Check out some other great ideas over at We Are THAT Family!