My new question of the day is where do I draw the line with keeping the kids' artwork? (Pardon the pun very much!) Do I keep every scrap of every tiny piece of paper they touch? No, this will surely send me to the funny farm in short order. Even without all of the paper that goes flying around the house, between and dog and the kids (er...and the husband), we have plenty piles of "stuff" to drive me crazy all day. Do I only save the really good ones? No, how can I judge which ones fit the bill anyway? What about the art that shows a kid has mastered a new skill or has made his very best letter "P" or bunny or flower or whatever ever? No, how do I know that's their best? Tomorrow they might come up with something that amazes me even more.
I try to keep it all around as long as I can, but as normally happens, I couldn't take it anymore so just a bit ago I chucked a big pile in the trash while the kids were distracted with Spongebobby. And I always look through the pile and pick out or two of the best work for each kid. We have a special place to stash those so that one day, a long, long time from now, when I decide to take up scrapbooking, I will have some material. Ok, that made me laugh. Allow me to be candid for a moment. I will never scrapbook. I am just too lazy and disorganized. (And it doesn't interest me. Does that make me a bad mom? No. Does that make me feel a tinge guilty? Yes. ) The children will be sent to college or married off with a large plastic bin containing all of their treasures that they can sift through and laugh and remember the good ole days of being a kid, scribble-scrabbling all the time. If they want to make volumes of books from these papers, so be it. I'm not doing it.
One thing I love to do, however, is frame the kids art and put it in the house. It makes me smile when I look at it and also makes me feel less bad that I don't catalog my kids' every move. Here is one of my favorites by Charlie. It's a guy, standing next to another guy, and I think one of them might also be a monster.
I try to keep it all around as long as I can, but as normally happens, I couldn't take it anymore so just a bit ago I chucked a big pile in the trash while the kids were distracted with Spongebobby. And I always look through the pile and pick out or two of the best work for each kid. We have a special place to stash those so that one day, a long, long time from now, when I decide to take up scrapbooking, I will have some material. Ok, that made me laugh. Allow me to be candid for a moment. I will never scrapbook. I am just too lazy and disorganized. (And it doesn't interest me. Does that make me a bad mom? No. Does that make me feel a tinge guilty? Yes. ) The children will be sent to college or married off with a large plastic bin containing all of their treasures that they can sift through and laugh and remember the good ole days of being a kid, scribble-scrabbling all the time. If they want to make volumes of books from these papers, so be it. I'm not doing it.
One thing I love to do, however, is frame the kids art and put it in the house. It makes me smile when I look at it and also makes me feel less bad that I don't catalog my kids' every move. Here is one of my favorites by Charlie. It's a guy, standing next to another guy, and I think one of them might also be a monster.
"Charlie's Guys" 2010
I love how tough guys and monsters are so beautiful when our children are young!
ReplyDeleteBTW...one way to "keep" the art and yet not clutter your world with paper is to take pictures of it and store it on snapfish or picasa or the like! Then if you want to do a quick easy and relatively inexpensive way to have hard copies in beautiful form...you do a quick online scrapbook and have it printed by snapfish! It's a beautiful thing I tell you...beautiful!
Thanks, Jeanine! I will have to look into that.
ReplyDeleteI also agonize over which ones (and how many) to keep. I also have under-the-bed bins full of their masterpieces. And I also will never scrapbook. ;) But I do like making photo books on shutterfly. That's as close to scrapbooking as I will ever get. ~Missy
ReplyDelete