Drowning in artwork from school

[Aria999]

DS is 5. Every day he brings art home from school (or varying quality). I've been putting the better ones up in his room and discreetly throwing away the rest but there's no more space! Piles of artwork are building up all over the house!

What do people do about it? Just throw it away after a period of time? Involve the DC in choosing what to keep? I don't want him to think I don't like his art .

We have an IKEA curtain wire which hangs the best ones. It's one in/one out.

Remember it's the process with school art, not the result.

We leave ours as presents for the recycling collectors 😉 some bits obviously kept on the fridge. I panicked when he noticed it in there once on the way to preschool and explained it was a gift for all their hard work...

I'm at this stage already from nursery and DS is only 2.5! We bought some slip in wallet foldersand gave one each to DM and MIL for Christmas so now we get to share the joy

@Quitelikeacatslife

Have one lidded storage box for each kid, after display Chuck them in there along with school books etc then filter it out if it gets full. My friend did this though which is genius

Your friend has very artistic dc!

@slooowdaysinlockdown

Frame a couple & bin the rest or you'll end up on some tv decluttering show eventually

😂 yes probably!

Thanks everyone for the good ideas and the confidence that binning it doesn't make me a terrible parent. I will be doing a purge into the recycling bin in the first instance 🤣

At no point in my life have I cared about looking through my old artwork.

Put each one up as they bring it home and then chuck it and replace with each new one.

We have a single framed self portrait by DS on the wall which is fabulous. I have a box for the mothers day and christmas cards they make at primary but the volume does slow down. DD1 is a teenager and loves to paint so next week I'm getting one of hers framed as well. I have a photo of 6 drawings she did aged 4 before DH and I got up one Sunday morning, there was no way I was keeping everything!

Mine comes out of nursery every day with fistfuls of crumpled paper. Most of it’s shit, like a biro squiggly line on a piece of paper that’s been glued to another piece. So yes it ends up in the bin unless it looks like there’s been any effort put into it. I’m not particularly sentimental though!

We also have this problem, plus I do the school run by bike. Sometimes I’m sure anyone can see is a huge pile of sparkly cardboard pedalling along with no person visible beneath it all

Just a word of caution from someone who has spent my fair share of teaching in Early years, many times the art has been heavily ‘supported’ by an adult, other times the writing names go on the work so kids take someone else’s home - they don’t generally know which is theirs!

I had one lidded storage box that fitted under the bed and stored all my kids art in there - only 1 piece on display at a time - when it got full, kids would ‘sort’ it out. God knows where the box is now... I’m a crap mum!

writing = wrong 🤣

Take photos of it all and store them in a file. If there are pieces you really love, frame them or keep them in a folder. The rest just goes in the photo album.

Mine's 2.5, he has a slot for 3 pictures on the wall of his choosing, the rest get unceremoniously recycled.

The good ones get a picture taken of them and put into the year's photo album, it's nice to look at how his style has progressed.

Don’t always believe what the kids say. I still remember as a child, my mum asking me if I wanted to keep a painting. I said no, but what I really wanted was for my mum to say we must keep it because it was really good. I went to sneak it out of the bin and was torn in half. I was upset and my poor mum was totally bewildered!

As for my 3 yr old, a few pieces are on the fridge but I’m afraid the rest are in the bin. Maybe when he starts producing something recognisable, I’ll be more inclined to keep it 😆