My son is now 9 and I have been collecting artwork, yes even the faded post-it that he first scribbled on, ever since he could do something other than drool. For years I have put his, and later my daughter's, artwork and school papers into bankers boxes, folders, plastic bins etc. Ever so mindful of not throwing away anything that "might" be important. Until last week.
As one of my summer projects I took on how to be store my kids' crafts, school papers etc. Given the larger sizes of some of the artwork, I have been consistently challenged to find appropriate ways to store these larger items so that they don't get destroyed. While talking to a fellow mom recently, she mentioned that she had heard of someone using unused pizza boxes. They allow for storage of the bulkier items and stack well. However, the best feature is that you only assign one box per year. Once the box is full it is full. That way if you engage your child in helping you, it helps set a boundary up-front as to the amount of items to be retained. And, let's be honest- it also helps the parent too.
I found my boxes online at a restaurant supply store: www.webstaurantstore.com. You can buy the generic boxes with "pizza" on them or just plain corrugated cardboard. They come in packs of 50 for about $15.00, so I would suggest teaming with another parent and make the order worthwhile because shipping is almost as much as the boxes.
Label maker in hand, I set out and labeled all of the boxes and began the ridiculously time consuming task of organizing:
And then there was the final result!
