How do you manage artwork/paperwork etc? I am drowning!

[MamOfTwo]

Help needed! I am trying to de-clutter and my problem is the endless amount of 'paper stuff' we seem to have - postcards, birthday cards, letters, children's artwork, children's school books etc. How do other folks manage this? I can't bring myself to throw it all out due to the sentimental value. I do have box files for the boring stuff like bills etc but need a better system for artwork, I think!

1. open bin

2. dump

With birthday cards I display them all on shelves and take a photo of birthday child with the cards ( arrange cards around child sitting on floor if you don't have enough shelf space), then bin the cards after one week.
One of my friends cuts out pictures on the cards and sticks them on plain card to make thank you cards, but I found that a bit weird to get the card we'd carefully selected for her child cut up and sent back to us as a thank you for the present, but each to their own!

Good idea about the birthday cards. Sadly we don't have a scanner and sadly I don't think I am wired like you Art! It has all built up and I just don't know where to start. One box at a time, I think. Any other tips?

I have a scrapbook for my two and I cut the handwritten part (ie one sentence saying my beautiful grandchild/godson) and one front of the card (age) so the special messages ate kept. Dh parents are really elderly so I think its nice not to thrwo out their writing but that keeps paper to a minimum. I frame a few piece of art. One or two in scrapbook. Rest for the bin

You could just photograph the art and make photo books op

Wouldn't take long

I have a birthday box for each of my dc. It lives in the loft and I elastic band together their birthday cards and pop them in third birthday box. As for artwork, art shops do large plastic folders (the cheaper ones are made of see through plastic and a large piece of card in the middle and have a black plastic handle, more expensive ones are black and made of something which looks a bit like leather. I display artwork in our kitchen for a while and then pop it into their folders. I'm a bit more ruthless with exercise books, but again you could tie each year together with string and pop in a box in the loft?
Can you tell there is a lot in our loft?

I do the scanning/photo and bin...
But also have display folders - one with clear plastic pockets for each child. They normally can hold up to about 16 A4 sized pages. When the DCs do a new picture they decide whether it goes into the folder - if it does and the folder is full they have to choose one to take out (which gets scanned)
They and you can easily look at their best/favourite artwork...

Gah, some months on I am STILL struggling with this! I am giving myself a deadline of one month to get it sorted. Anybody else struggling/have tips?