The collected mementos of a person’s entire young life could probably fill an aparador or a filing cabinet. We never give much thought on how we store our children’s school papers and keepsakes. We tend to simply dump all their things into a drawer or box. But we could actually sort out this huge collection of souvenirs so that by their 18th birthday, we could proudly hand our daughter or son their whole life up to that point.
As each of our children went to school, didn’t we experience the constant muddling through the sea of souvenirs, cards, and letters which grew like the rising tide as they passed through kindergarten, elementary school and high school? Then we realized that there was far more than papers collected, since kids save many seemingly insignificant things like old keys, deflated party balloons and plastic angels.
There are five simple things that could take care of all these things: the in/out basket, the holding file, the scrapbook, the photo organizer, and the junk container or “treasure box.”
In/out basket
Most department stores sell plastic filing cabinets. Assign a drawer to each of your kids as their “in/out” basket. When the kids come home from school they can arrange their books and school papers into their assigned drawers: things including mails, school notices or magazines received during the day. Of course we, together with the kids, have to clean out these drawers, preferably every month. There are some things that have historic value – things that you and your children may want as keepsakes such as cards from Grandma, photographs, etc.
Try to keep a cross-section of things so you can always remember what that period of your child’s life was like. These can show likes and dislikes, struggles and strengths, such as their handmade preschool birthday card to you with a drawing of an airplane or princess.
Just remember that valued keepsakes, especially their drawings, should be labeled indicating the child’s name and the date it was made. Pieces of wadded-up pad paper that may seem like junk could actually be a valued keepsake, as indicated by the note you took the time to jot down on it: “Speech Christopher gave when he ran for mayor in the fourth grade.” Won’t you feel grateful that you did not consign it to the trash can immediately because you took five to ten seconds to write that sentence?
The holding file
After cleaning out the in/out baskets, you are left with a collection of keepsakes. It is best to put them in a holding file – a place where they are kept safe and out of the way until the opportunity arises to put them into scrapbooks.
The holding file can be just about anything, such as a box filled with file folders or stacking letter trays. However, it is helpful to have a separate container for each child. Stored in this way, the things are safe and fairly chronological. If someone wants to peruse his waiting collection or work on his scrapbook, he can just grab his things without having to sift through the whole pile. At least once a year, the holding file should be emptied out and its contents placed in scrapbooks.
The scrapbook
Most of us dread tedious hours spent mounting pictures, filling in baby books and fussing with scrapbooks. But putting together these collections need not be time consuming. For example, every year put each child’s collection into a separate envelope with his name and the year. Keep the envelopes filed in chronological order, and you will have a life story told with photographs, artwork, schoolwork, and other reminders.
Each one of your kids should have a scrapbook that, over the years, can become a cherished possession. Here is a very simple system: use two-inch loose-leaf binders and mount everything on reinforced loose-leaf paper. Special keepsakes are stored with plastic sheet protectors. Use tabbed dividers to denote and separate each year.
It is during preschool and elementary days when a child usually takes home pieces of artwork. They are then displayed in the house for a few weeks before being thrown out. Sometimes the rueful feeling disappears if you take a picture of the child holding the piece before it goes into the trash bin. In this way the memory is kept, but not the masterpiece. Photos are an especially helpful way to save some of the three-dimensional things children do for school such as dioramas, relief maps, etc.
Photo organizers
Most people I know are photograph hoarders. Stacks of shoeboxes hold a mixed collection of photos of all our children and relatives. It is a basic rule to always label photographs so that you can remember the occasion and the names of everyone in the picture. Left unmarked, will that picture mean anything to you 20 years from now?
If your photograph collection includes spools of film, you might want to start a contact print file for each used spool. I have done this for our family, school events, or travels throughout the past 30 years. This makes reprinting copies for my articles, giveaways, or enlarging photographs for framing, easier and more efficient.
If you have a backlog of your unsorted pictures, here are some tips on how to classify them painlessly. First, collect all loose photographs you can find in drawers, boxes, cupboards, attic or basement. Second, classify them into family, school, travel or business photos. Each child can also have their own album showing their developmental years. Third, sort each file individually by year. When finished with this step in the process, you are now ready to mount the pictures into albums or scrapbooks.
There are many styles and types of photo albums in the market that hold all sizes of photographs. (Although size 3R photos are usually printed in photo shops, size 4R is more presentable.) I find pocket insert albums more practical, since magnetic stick albums dry out and hasten the fading of colored photos.
With the advancement of technology, gadgets such as digital cameras have made photo archiving easier and more convenient. Bulky photo albums or scrapbooks can now be done away with, and instead you can keep mementos in CDs, which are a great space saver.
Junk container a.k.a. ‘treasure box’
What about the wooden train engine Grandma gave Cyrus for his first Christmas, the paper mâch? Gabbie gave mom on Mother’s Day, or the painted stone paperweight Maxine gave dad for his birthday? Of course you will want to display and use some of these things, but a time comes when they will have to be tucked away to make room for new things. That is where treasure boxes come in.
Get a covered container, a plastic storage box, or a trunk, depending on how many things you have. You might want one box for each person, or an antique trunk for the collection of all the children’s souvenirs. Do not forget to write a brief explanation on a piece of masking tape and stick it to the object. Without a well-confined place for their “treasures,” you will have piles of papers and knick-knacks on their dressers and stacks of refuse on the floor.
Whatever type of container you give your children for their “junk,” it will be more effective if it does not have a lid. When the containers get full they have to throw some stuff out to make room for new “plunder.” While they are yet young, teach your children to throw or give things away, so they will not grow up to be the type of person who takes junk to the dump and comes home with more than they left with.
Don’t mess with the children’s psyche
The above methods of removing clutter from your home do require patience and care. Often parents can get exasperated with the buildup of clutter, and wish they could just throw out all their children’s “childish” keepsakes. But according to Deniece Schofield, a home management consultant/lecturer from Iowa and mother of five children, and author of Escape from the Kitchen and Confessions of a Happily Organized Family, if you inflict your adult wishes on your children you could end up messing with their psyche.
The ideas in this article were drawn from her book, Confessions of a Happily Organized Family.
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