Organized Homeschool Carnival – organizing projects
This week we are going to talk about Organizing your projects: storing paper, lapbooks, notebooks, and old projects. This is not as difficult as it sounds. What I did was buy a large plastic tub that has the hanging rods for setting in hanging folders. I label each folder with my child’s name and school year and store papers in the folders all year long. If one folder gets full, I just begin another one. I like to buy the packets of hanging folders that come in several colors so that I can assign each child a color. Then I know at a glance which folders belong to which child. At the end of the year, I go through the papers a second time and keep only those that really matter – maybe a great essay or piece of artwork, etc. My children love to go back and look through their old schoolwork!
We have made our share of lapbooks and I saved them all for a long time – all on one bookshelf. However, I eventually needed that shelf space. So, I brought down all of the lapbooks and had the children go through the ones they had made and let them choose which ones I was to keep. They each had their own favorite topics that they wanted to save. Those lapbooks are now in the large plastic tub. One of the great things about these large tubs is that there is space under the folders to lay a few larger items flat.
One of my friends shared with me how she organizes her children’s projects: “My three children keep their daily stuff in plastic tubs that they take wherever they’re working – kitchen table, bedroom, friend’s house or on the road. At the end of the day, it’s stashed back in our game/art supplies cupboard. It works out great for us. On our bookcases, I combine little books/paperbacks by subject in labeled magazine boxes e.g. geography, art related, etc. Otherwise those skinny books are always tipping over.”
Here is a picture of her closet:
As for storing old projects, I have to say that we are not much of a “saving” family. Projects are displayed for a while upon completion, but then it’s time to toss them. There just isn’t enough room to hold onto them all. Often my children will display a project on a shelf in their own room for a bit longer after it leaves the bookshelves . . . until their next favorite project comes along . . . then they throw away the first one and display the next one!
I think the hardest part about keeping all of the papers and projects is having to declutter them every now and then. If I could, I’d hold onto every piece of schoolwork forever because it’s fun to watch my children progress as they learn!
I WISH I had a closet like that to keep our stuff in (we live a house that is less than 1000 sq ft probably closer to 900sq ft) I have to get creative here. I have a tote for each child in the garage that they can put the papers, drawings, etc in that they want to keep. The nicest ones go on the fridge for a while then into their tote for save keeping. Once a year we go through the totes and label everything by the school year and grade and toss what they do to want to keep and put the rest into manila files in the same tote.
The totes are a great idea! Also, I’ve seen some really creative ways to hang things, that gets them out of the way, but off of valuable floor space.
A great idea I read about is to take a picture of the child with their artwork, project, etc. You can print it out or save it to the hard drive. A memory and photo without the loss of closet space.
I keep everything together for a week and at the end of the week I take a picture of it and video her explaining it and anything else she wants to say. I then dont feel bad when its time to eventually toss them we have pictures and a bit of video about everything. I also do this with everything she mails. We love to look back at all the thank you cards and pictures she has sent all over the country and how her writing has progressed.
I have a friend that chooses the best of her children’s work for each year and stores them in an album with protective sleeves. When her children graduate she gives them their book to keep.
I have kept everything my children have done. So far. My oldest son is 9 (4th grade) and my youngest is 4 (pre-k). I had started using the bankers boxes last year. But those filled up pretty quickly. My newest idea that I hope to make a reality this summer is to scan everything into our comptuer and try to put each grade level on one disc. For instance all my older sons Kindergarten things will go on one disc with his name and grade on it. My younger son will have one with his name and Pre-K on it. I figure it is easier to store the discs than all that paper.
So far this is my main summer project for myself. It is a lot of things to scan but I figure I can break it down into 15-30 minutes a day or so I should have it completed in a timely manner. We had even thought about making each child a disc with all thier artwork on it and making a copy for thier grandparents (especially my parents who live a few states away) and giving it to them as a gift. 
It may just become a new tradition for us. 