If you have school-aged kids, you know.
The papers.
The worksheets.
The artwork.
The newsletters.
The permission slips.
The certificates.
The birthday invitations.
The things they made that are absolutely adorable and therefore impossible to throw away.
If I kept every piece of paper that came home, we’d need another house.
So I’ve had to develop a system.
First: Everything Gets Sorted
When papers come home, they don’t stay in the backpack forever.
We sort them into a few basic categories:
Action: Something I need to sign, return, or respond to.
Keep: Important information or something I want to save.
Display: Artwork or something special enough to hang up temporarily.
Recycle: Everything else.
The biggest rule is that papers don’t get to live permanently on the kitchen counter.
Important Papers Get a Home
School calendars, important contact information, schedules, and other things we may need later get filed.
I want to be able to find them without searching through a pile.
[Magnetic file for the fridge]
Artwork Gets Curated
This is the hard part.
Because obviously my child is a tiny artistic genius and every single drawing is precious.
Except… there are a lot of drawings.
I try to save the pieces that really capture something special.
A particularly funny drawing.
Something they worked really hard on.
A project that represents a stage they’re going through.
The rest can be appreciated without necessarily being stored forever.
The Best Stuff Goes Into Their Keepsake Files
I have a dedicated system for saving the things I really want to remember.
School pictures.
Certificates.
Special artwork.
Programs.
Birthday cards.
Memorable school projects.
The things I’ll want to look back on years from now.
This keeps the sentimental things from getting mixed in with ordinary paperwork.
And Sometimes We Just Throw Things Away
This was difficult for me at first.
But keeping every worksheet doesn’t mean I love my kids more.
The memory isn’t in the paper.
It’s in the kid who made it.
And I would much rather have a small collection of meaningful memories than boxes overflowing with papers nobody will ever look at.
The goal isn’t to save everything.
It’s to save the things that matter.
Leave a Reply