Where to keep all the school stuff that's just been brought home?

[Jemster]

DS haa just finished year 1 and has brought home a big bag full of his exercise books, things been on display on the wall etc. How do people store all this sort of thing as he's always bringing bits home all year round. I couldn't bring myself not to keep it but we don't have much room or storage.

You're going to have to be way more ruthless or your house will be full of bits of crap after 16 years

The bin is the place to store it

Once you've taken out one or two pictures and put it in a scrap book. Or you photograph them on your phone and then chuck it.

Choose the best pictures and store them in a poster tube, with a sticker on the end saying 'Year 1'. You can then build a collection of his pictures in tubes for posterity without them taking over the house. In terms of schoolwork, make a scrapbook of his best efforts with archive quality paper and glue, again one for each year. It might be nice to do it with him.

Martha Stewart has more ideas but you might have to be a keen SAHM to have time for them!

Children's Art

The bin is a fantastic storage item

I have five children and wouldn't be able to move if I kept it all.
I keep all reports, mothers day cards etc, reading diaries and extra special work. The rest gets binned, usually in private. They've never missed it and I doubt you will either.

Bin - apart from special items

I buy an A4 plastic folder with the built in polypockets and store stuff in these - each child has one for each year at school - they still end up taking up a fair bit of space, but at least they store neatly in a box in the loft - school reports, spare school photos, certificates, special pictures and pieces of work all go in, but the limited number of pockets helps me to restrict what is being kept.

We have 5DC and nearly everything they've all done is stored in boxes in the attic,they each have they're own names boxes.

I'm keeping it all for when they all older and have they're own children so they can show they're LO's.

be aware that you may be keeping it just for the kids to bin later. My mother is still refusing to throw out some of my school stuff; it includes 12-year-old poetry assignments, cringe!!

photograph, then chuck. It's just homework.

Laminate your favourites. Hole punch and bind.

Hey presto a book :)

My parents saved all of our school stuff, then decided to deliver it to me a couple of weeks after I moved into my current house. I looked through a couple of books, let my children laugh at my writing and stories, then threw it all away.
I take pictures/scan my children's drawings and keep stories that they write. Everything else goes in the bin.

You are in luck. You have a boy. Hopefully less likely to be attached to sentimental bits of paper. Bin as much as you can. A book and a couple of other bits from each year is plenty.

A friend of mine has a good system that I keep meaning to adopt but have not quite got around to - when all the stuff comes home, they spend a couple of hours with their DC going through everything, listening to the stories, praising the work. They take photos of a few key pieces of work and pick a few others (paintings, drawings, robot sculptures etc) to give as gifts to the grandparents. Everything else is recycled / binned. They have 4 kids and a small place so they have to keep on top of it!

Photographing their work is a great idea. I wish I'd thought of that. I tend to put their best pieces on the fridge for a while, and then generally they'll replace them with something new and chuck the old stuff out. When they first started school, I kept absolutely EVERYTHING, but then I did sit down with the kids and have a bit sort out and culled a lot. I think the worst was the "boxwork" items (sculptures made out of old cardboard boxes) - I never had enough room for them all and they didn't want them chucked out.

Now I've kept the very best work from their early years in a large plastic crate stored in the garage. The amount of stuff that comes home does get less as they get older