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What Do I Do With The Mountain of
Art and Craft Work My Child Wants to
Display Around the House?
What Do I Do With the Mountain of Art and Craft Work My Child Wants to Display Around the House?
With the end of the school term approaching, along comes with it a whole heap of at and craft creations being sent home…
While it is important to acknowledge and display the (never ending) artistic creations of your children, we all know this can turn into a fridge with no space to spare, or what was once a freshly painted wall turn into something that slightly resembles wall paper designed by your budding little artist.
So what can you do with all of these never ending art pieces?
One way to manage the avalanche of art projects is to narrow down the art displays to 1 piece at a time. The most effective way to do this is to create a system in your house where each child can display only their newest (or favourite if there is more than one new creation) piece of work (whether it be a painted picture or a craft creation).
This doesn’t mean they have to get rid of all their previous art works, but it will mean you need to help your child to make some decisions about what to do with the older art work.
A few ideas include:
- Archiving old pieces (e.g. in a tub or memory box)
- Scrapbooking (create a scrap book of some of their favourite artworks)
- Recycle (if your child does not want to keep their old pieces, discuss which are appropriate for the recycling bin, OR create your own “art recycling bin” at home where you can place pieces of craft that can be re-used to make new craft works in the future!)
We suggest reviewing your archive boxes at least once a year (after storing them for a while, your child may not wish to still keep them).
Good luck and we hope this helps reduce the amount of art work clutter piling up in your house, while still making sure your children are acknowledged for, and able to display the awesome artworks they create!
If you’re after some more tips, head over to the strategies section in the members area of our website for more ideas!
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7 Replies to “What Do I Do with the Mountain of Art and Craft Work my Child wants to Display Around the House?”
Awesome post! I use my kids’ artwork in my art journals. My boys love it. I also keep a few pieces in a memory box.
I think the scrapbook idea is a really good one for keeping the most special pieces, because yes, periodically, some of those pieces of artwork will need to be cleared out since the kids seem to have boundless levels of creativity!
Jake is 8. So that is 8 years of artwork. I used to feel guilty throwing some away. But now we go through and keep his favorites in totes. I let him display all his artwork all over his walls in his room.
These are some wonderful suggestions. We’re just starting to get the school projects coming home and it’s been tough to decide what to do with some of it. I like the idea of a memory box, we could start one for each year!
My parents saved our artwork and various class projects in a big plastic box in the basement. It wasn’t until last summer that we started going through them. It was fun to see some old projects and we were able to cut down what was actually 2 or 3 boxes, to one manageable box of things that we just can’t get rid of yet.
Great ideas! I’ve seen services where you can scan in artwork and create a book of them so that you don’t have to keep the original!
Once a year? I better get on that. I have so much artwork its not even funny. But its all so cute!