To ask what you do with all your *shit*

[thedcbrokemybank]

We have a side in our kitchen that is piled with paperwork. It is mainly kids stuff - a comic that was bought last week that hasn't been finished but if I put away will get forgotten about, a list of spellings for the term, timetable of dance class which I can never remember, a wordsearch that my dd spent ages making. Generally just stuff which if I file will never be seen again or never get used. I just don't seem to be able to have a place for it. What do you all do with the shit that gets piled up on the side??
I should add that we have 4 dc so we have a lot of crap!

I have 4 DC and a similar pile
It is referred to as the kettle pile or crap pile

I photograph paperwork and save on Google keep. Then shred /recycle it.

File it.... never seen again works well for us!

My kids have a plastic tub each that they can store crap in. School stuff goes on the pin board and anything else goes in the bin.

If the kids tubs (IKEA trofast medium size) get full, they have to clear them out and choose what to dump. Works well.

I've got a lovely big square basket on top of my fridge. It fits perfectly, so looks really nice as well - almost like a feature haha.

I just scoop everything up and shove it in that. The sides are about six inches high - so you can't see a thing!

I have a big long wooden chest that sits on the floor in the hall. The lid lifts up and inside there are 4 baskets. I used to put all the kids/school related stuff in one of them and every few months we would sit down together and decide what was for throwing and what was for keeping. Most of it went in the bin yay! All the keeping stuff went in their memory box which they get when they leave home. 2 DC's have moved out so just one to go now.

And as for all the general clutter/crap - that mostly gets thrown straight in the bin. I'm really a little bit OTT about having a tidy organised house and downstairs is a strictly crap free zone My DH & kids all generally humour put up with me and know that anything important to them is theirs to look after and if they leave it laying around they run the risk of loosing it.

Blatantly place marking. 3 DCs here and the clutter is starting to drive me a little insane. Previously everything has gone up to the loft (out of sight, out of mind), but MIL passed away last summer and basically the contents of her house got moved to our loft to be dealt with at a later date by DH when he feels able to. Our loft is now groaning under the weight of it and can't take any more.

We also need some sort of 'office' system to keep all the important paperwork like insurance and bank statements etc. Our current system of placing on the stairs to go upstairs at some point isn't working and I'm stuck for ideas.

DH and I have a basket each in the cupboard in the kitchen. It goes in there and we file/chuck out every couple of months. Anything important where we need reminded goes on fridge with a magnet till its done.

He's a terrible one for not finding things - so I can just say - 'I haven't seen it look in your pile' - as that's the only place I'd put any of his stuff if I touched it.

I have a set of little plastic drawers in the corner of the kitchen so the DC can easily get to them. One drawer is for school paperwork (eg the spelling lists, etc). One drawer is for comics, sticker books. The other drawers are for notebooks, cards, paints, pencils, crafty stuff,etc.
The timetable, I'd put on the noticeboard in the utility or transfer the dates/times direct to the calendar.

I have similar but all ours goes into a drawer in the living room cabinet, it's overflowing atm, I try and clear it out once a week ( doesn't always happen though ) it's mainly school info and letters my OH is more organised all of the important paperwork gets put in plastic wallets and put in a ring binder folder

You need a crap basket.

We have one in the kitchen. Anything left lying about is dumped in the crap basket. I sort it out on a regular basis - I wait until the whole unsuspecting lot of them are hanging about relaxing in the kitchen then I start handing out the individual items of crap to be taken away and dealt with by the person who owns it/needs to act upon it.

A crap basket should be a little bigger than an A4 piece of paper and about 20 deep so fits all sorts of items of crap.

*20cm

Each family member has a ring binder folder on the kitchen shelf with those clear polypockets in.

Any school/hobby stuff for the boys goes into their folder.

I have a clipboard for stuff that needs actually dealing with and clear it every day.

Anything like magazines/comic s or half done puzzles wouyld just get deposited in their bedroom.

My sister has 3 little ones and random a home day care, she had a brilliant solution. There was a 'showcase string' that went around the topportunity of the room and you hung you pictures/art there. It kept everything off the surfaces and you still got to enjoy them. After a few weeks or months you swap them out and the old ones go to the recycling bin after taking a photo.

I have a paper pile in the kitchen and I recently sorted it out and shredded a small forests worth of paper. It's already growing again.

I have this from Ikea

It is great. We have a drawer for school stuff, a drawer for medical stuff (DD1 has a lot of medical stuff), a drawer for financial/bills, a drawer for misc. You could however have a drawer for each family member (our DC are still very little). Once it gets full they need to sort it out.

Only things that need acting on go in there, stuff that's just to be kept "for reference" goes in a wooden box in a cupboard and then eventually never transferred to our filing system. There isn't much of that these days though.

Hallway is clutterzone. We have a chalkboard which I write on things I need to remember, shopping list etc. I take a photo of the shopping list then wipe it. I have a calendar next to this for birthdays appointments etc.

I also have some small tubs on a rail underneath and random things live in these like the hairbrush, batteries, spare pens, pritt-stick, sunglasses etc.

Finally we have a letter rack with 5 spaces (5 of us so one each) in here we keep letters, school work etc. Once they get full we clear out.

I also have a "mandrawer" in the kitchen for lightbulbs, blue tac and keys that I don't know what they open.

The place that I file all the shit is called the bin. Seriously though, if there's stuff like happy meal toys/half finished comics etc that are left and never touched, they get chucked. Stuff that needs filing gets taken out the envelopes, so I can discard all the bumpf that fills the envelope and put in the filing drawer. Anything else either gets put in a bag I keep to one side for shredding or binned.

I have a box at the bottom if the stairs for stuff that needs to go back upstairs - stuff like scrunchies, nerf darts, earrings...that can be emptied as and when but it's a place to put things when I'm tidying.

We have a wall magazine rack (IKEA) that we stick newspapers and magazines etc into.

Get a decent calendar and transfer the dates into that for dance lessons of whatever

Photograph other letters that you don't need hard copies for.

I would give tour daughter a wallet with a4 plastic pockets and let her put in her wordsearches or special artwork or whatever.

So many great ideas. Thank you!!

we have scrap books where landmark (first drawing of a person with feet for example) and important work is stuck into.
a notice board for timetable stuff on the wall

"Current" notices like details of what to take on school trips, which will need to be referred to, go on the fridge. Other paper gets binned. Comics etc would go on DCs' beds, things they've drawn and want to display is blutacked onto their walls (I'll deal with bluetack marks next decade!), certificates in a folder in their rooms, and I have an easy access A4 size basket each for the stuff they produce that I want to keep, and their reports etc.

We are still working on grown up paperwork though.

countingkids123 We have a concertina file for our paperwork, one like this, would that be any good to you? It's an automatic "safe place" for passports, birth certificates, renewal documents, etc.

I have a Tidy Books shelf for ds's stuff (magnetic whiteboard with pegs underneath) so all school notices, Sainsbury's stuff for schools vouchers, etc go on there and his jacket, swim bag, school backpack and the like hang underneath.

Our house still isn't tidy though.