Some of you may be beginning to think about shopping for school clothes and gearing up for your child’s next school year, so here’s a strategy for handling the mountain of school papers. Each day artwork, graded paper, and homework come home and seem to spill out everywhere. Soon the pile is all over the house or your child’s backpack is bursting at the seams. Below are 5 easy steps to managing that paper load and keeping the school day memories intact.

1. Label a 10 x 13 manila envelope as follows: Child’s Name
School Year
Grade

This envelope will hold a year’s worth of your child’s school work, artwork, and even report cards. How can all of it fit? By only putting in the most precious of items and enjoying the others for a short time before they are recycled.

2. Label a basket or wall pocket with your child’s name.

Place this basket or wall pocket in the same area where your child drops the backpack when entering the house after school. Train the child to remove all graded school papers and artwork from the back pack daily. Have the child put these papers in their labeled basket or wall pocket. DO NOT put homework, which needs to be turned in, here.

3. Pick a time each week when you will sit down with your child and look through the weeks’ papers. This is a good time to have quality conversation with your child. Compliment your child, ask questions, talk about the past school week and the week to come. Children need to know that you care what is going on at their school. Decide together which paper should be saved in the manila envelope. If there are many pieces of artwork or large items, consider taking a picture of them and putting the photograph in the envelope to save space.

4. As the school year progresses, the child’s manila envelope may need to be gone through and some items removed to make room for the most precious items to be kept.

The goal here is to have one manila envelope per year. The most important work is saved in an orderly fashion and can be retrieved easily.

5. At the end of the school year, store the yearly manila envelopes in a plastic storage container with a lid. This will keep the dust and moisture out. This can be stored in the garage or other storage area. Remember to label this storage container, “School Days Memorabilia”, to save you from opening every storage bin looking for this school work in the future!

© 2005 Natalie Conrad