The First in a series on Back to School (gasp!) Organizing
Well, it’s taken me all summer to fill you in on what I came up with for storing all my kids’ school and artwork! One of the big issues I had to deal with was space! Not just space to store it all, but space to go through the paper and projects. Space I didn’t have to worry about my kids getting into (since some a lot! was being tossed). But also, just space to lay everything out and sort through it all. This space ended up being my bedroom! Which is against my strict policy of no work of any kind in my bedroom. Unfortunately, sometimes it ends up being the only place my kids don’t spend a lot of time in our little house! So for the past 4 weeks, we’ve been walking over and around all sorts of piles + boxes. Oh well! I decided to go with the file boxes I mentioned before. They will fit in each of the kids’ closets and will also keep me accountable for tossing things as they don’t hold much. The other big obstacle was what to do with the larger or 3D projects. I choose to do a collage print for each of my kids. I’ll follow up with this later as I’ve also been wanting to spruce up the gallery of their artwork in our family room and these pieces when framed will be just what we could use there!
Here’s how it all went for me:
I made a recycling pile, a pile for each of my kids for each grade, and a pile for oversized items to photograph.
After a trip to Staples, I found some file boxes that would work well, the pendafelx, and file folders for each of my three kids. Thought it’d be fun to color code which ended up being a second trip to Staples. After I forgot to buy the Avery labels to print the cute ones from iheartorganizing I decided I would just print them on plain paper and save me a third trip to Staples. Not such a great idea, instead of going to staples one more time for labels, I ended up printing, cutting, and gluing 3 sets of these. Not sure what I was thinking there?
This last photo shows how much room is left in my son’t box that is going into the 3rd grade
I’ve also eliminated my separate files/boxes for reports cards, sports + team photos, certificates, and school pictures. These are all now in the file folders. All the school papers and artwork are in the pendaflex itself.
If you are going to start this project, definitely allow yourself time. I did a little bit over several days because I just didn’t have any large chunks of time without my little guys around. Also, be warned that this project seems to snowball! It spurred my need to clean out and rearrange closets, redo my wall gallery in the family room, and tackle the great abyss of photos of my family hidden deep on my hard drive!!
I can’t wait to share with you the new wall gallery when it’s complete!
Don’t miss the GIVEAWAY tomorrow!
and please vote for me
The theme for this school year is organization. After two long years I hope to use the time between September 4th and the last day of school to finally get organized. (And getting the landscaping plan won’t hurt either.)
Love your folders. Now that my kids are out of elementary school I can easily separate myself from what’s a keeper and what’s not. The art projects start trimming down around 4th grade and then the things I like to keep are more of the written work, which fits nicely into your folder system.
And something to always keep in the back of your mind is digital storage. I recently found out that my external hard drive, the one dedicated solely to housing my life’s photos, has died. So I have to send it to a hard drive recovery center and will likely have to pay more than $1,000 to get it restored…if it’s at all possible. Backing up your back up is the lesson here, I guess.
Great job on the blog. I voted for you in both places 😉
thank you for voting and thank you for commenting.
i will be posting about one way you can save and cherish some of those adorable larger projects soon!
Love the folder idea… Next stop, my house?
Hey Domonique, quick question for ya. I just finally cleaned off my dining room table of all the papers the kids brought home at the end of last year! I had started this file folder system too and love it! Now, am I understanding you in that these pendeflex bins are large enough to house big art projects on the bottom and fit the folders on top (hanging up)? If so, that’s awesome and darn, because I just bought them all colored crates! Lol thx
A few of the large projects are folded in the pendeflex, but the majority were photographed and turned into digital art. I will be posting about that soon. A few very special ones I couldn’t part with are in a large tub, (one tub for all 3 kids), with each project labeled with name and date. Those are in the attic! Thank you for commenting. good luck!
What size file boxes did you get?
Hi Angela! Good question. They are from staples and are about 12″ wide X 18″ deep X 12″ high. Nice tight fitting lids and ample space. The larger items that the little guys bring home are mostly photographed and archived. I hope that helps!