Children's school artwork and too many handbags... Tidy people HELP!

[Mysaucepansdontmatch]

Hi tidy peeps.

So, my dd's school keep sending volumes and volumes of her "craft" and pictures. I try to go with the philosophy of keep things with photos on, reports, any really special pieces with good comments on and the cutest pictures.

DH thinks we should keep it all.

His mum and dad still have a loft full of his stuff from school and they try and offload it on us at every opportunity which he moans about so I can't see our kids thanking us if we present them with a back catalogue of their whole primary school experience. What do you guys do? I feel so mean throwing her stuff away!

Other query is handbags. I seem to have lots. Of large ones. Small clutches are no probs they just get stored inside the large ones. But the big ones get stuffed to the back of my wardrobe where they fester until I am looking for something and then the whole bloody mess tumbles out again.

We are moving house soon and I really want to get a handle on all our stuff before we start moving to a house with loads of heavenly storage so I can carry on collecting crap

We have an ikea toy box that we call the hat-box that we keep hats, bags etc. also we have many hooks in the understairs cupboard for bags.

I have a cardboard folder per child per year for school work and art. Also a massive pinboard for wall worthy art and I put some on the wall in the utility room. The rest goes in the bin.

I do have some artwork displayed in kitchen and dd's room. Also have two bulging office files full of nursery, reception and year one stuff!

I think for the bags I am going to have to be ruthless and just get rid of some. I hardly use them anyway. They seem to date back to a time when I had fuck all else to worry about but buying huge bags in every available colour why?????

My name is Charleymouse and I am a hoarder.

I have just started taking a photo of artwork and then binning the original unless it is mega. HTH.

I am ruthless on the artwork and your criteria for keep or throw sounds sensible.

I had kept all my school books and when my Mum forced me to go through them about 7 years ago, I actually only kept a few project folders and memerable essays etc. All the maths/french/biology books from e.g. 3rd year (year 9 in new money!) all got binned - they meant nothing sentimentally for me and might as well have belonged to someone else.

Don't listen to your husband as my bet is he never has to think of where to store/display all the stuff!

Handbags - be ruthless again - if you really know you will never use it again then give it charity or to a friend etc You won't miss them.....

I have just had to clear out my childhood home and found practically every painting, model, school book, folder, essay etc etc that I have ever done! My mum had kept it all, which while lovely, was unnecessary. There was no way I could keep it all and actually, as someone else said, half of it I had no recollection of doing.
I vote for being ruthless, no matter what your DH says. One day he will sadly have to sort out his school stuff and realise it's impossible to keep. I have also decided not to do this for my dc, as it's very difficult going through it all.
Some lovely ideas here for how to keep / temporarily keep art work!

My DD's school makes a book for all the children with the best bits of their work, photos of them, their writing etc and we get it at the end of the year. I keep that and throw literally everything else away

This is what I do:
Artwork - take digital photos and then bin guilt-free.
Reports/books etc - scan, with books sometimes just a representative part and then shred/bin.
We are pretty hot on backing stuff up and that is a must to take this route.
I can now look back at things really easily and it is all dated etc and I can also pass it on to DS very easily when the times comes.

With respect to dd's artwork - show your dd the bulging office files and explain that you need to make more room for all her year 2 stuff ( and year 3, 4, 5 etc).
Have some quality mum and daughter time going through them all (sit at table with drinks and biscuits or whatever) and explain that you need to keep the best 3 (or 5 or whatever) from each year and decide on which these should be between you.
Discuss the pictures and enjoy reminiscing. Make positive comments about things like choice of colours, not colouring outside the lines, composition of pictures etc. The chances are that your dd will be more willing to be ruthless than you are (especially about "baby" nursery and reception pics) and she will enjoy the mum and daughter time and feel grown up to be asked her opinion.
You could maybe choose the best couple of all to be displayed in frames?