Childhood Treasures
>> Friday, October 16, 2009
I have reached a point in Motherhood where I am acquiring treasures. These treasures come in the form of artwork, worksheets and other school related items. My natural instincts are to keep every piece of my Mo-Tay's childhood in a box. My more logical side, tells me I am crazy crazy crazy and if I keep this up for the next 18 years, I will need an off site storage facility for it all.
What do you do with your child's artwork and other treasures? Do you keep it all? Do you only keep your favorites? (Is it possible to choose a favorite?)
How about those that have grown children....do you look back and wish you had kept more? Less? Do your children even care, now that they are grown?
Such dilemmas....
16 Pepsi Points :
I realized that I really have nothing like this from my childhood. We moved around so much, it probably got lost.
I am like Kristina, my mother kept nothing!
I, literally, have boxes of my kids work!
This is a good question. I only have one child, a 2-year-old, but I always want to save everything. I saved some of his hair when I gave him his first haircut, and now every time I cut his hair I have this urge (that I ignore) to save all of his hair.
He's too young for me to have a good answer to your question, but I'm interested in what others have to say.
i can't say since i have to kids yet... but i'm thinking that if i did, i would probably ask them to pick some of their favorites and those are what would go into a special box.. maybe...
I keep several things of my children. I keep important homework they get from parent teacher conference, I keep their artwork they do in school. Yep, I do have big plastic tubs of their work, but what a fun time it is to look back on their treasures and what they've done over the years. They love it, too.
I've saved everything so far, but they are all just pictures...no 3d art yet :) I plan on keeping everything because growing up, nothing was ever saved and I wish I could look back at those things I did when I was little, and maybe show my kids.
I put up a bulletin board to put all of Jackson's artwork for now up. Later I think I'm going to take a plain notebook and just stick everything in.
Here's where I love the age we live in. I scan or take a picture (or sometimes even video) of my kids projects. I have a folder on my desktop for each kid that I can putt these files into. I blog about them on my family blog so that when I print it out I'll have a record of some of the cute stuff they've done. (I also do this for hand writing because it's fun to see the development.)
Then I either hang up the originals in their room for a while or on our art wall (in our hallway upstairs). If it gets ripped off by little brother or we're ready to replace it it's ok because i still have a visual record. My kids love looking at the pictures and so far haven't minded that we dont keep it all.
My mom kept nothing of mine, except report cards.
When Jeff and I got married his mom gave me a huge box full of his artwork, school papers, report cards and newspaper clippings. It was an awesome gift for me to look back on his childhood.
I was saving everything when B first started school. It got to the point where I had bins full of papers and artwork. We recycled the regular school papers and I decided to pass on some to my parents and Jeff's mom. We picked 20 or 30 things to give to each. I kept a bunch.
Now that families aren't what they used to be, I recycle the school papers, except for the first test of the year and we keep the artwork in a bin in the attic. Also, now that they are older they make less art and bring home more worksheets. But I must keep the artwork because it is amazing to see the transition from kindergarten art to 6th grade art.
I have sworn that once the bin is packed full, I will keep no more. Whether I hold myself to that or not is another story.
That scanning idea from Debbie is pretty genius!
All I have of mine growing up is a drawing I made for the Easter Bunny. It's kind of cute, and I wish I had a bit more.
What I have done with my kids is at the beginning of each school year, I have them create a pile in their playroom of everything they make. Then once every other month or so I go through it (when they aren't looking) and keep two or three of my favorites. By the end of the year I have eight or nine of their special projects that I write the date on and put in a box to keep.
One thing we did once that was really cool was this: Ethan made a drawing that he was particularly proud of. We put a picture of him in the middle (where there was space), and then we used contact paper on front and back and created a placemat. He loved eating off of it! Now it's in my box.
I have a rubbermaid bin for each of the kids and their treasures. I tried to go through about once a year when they were in the mass collection phase and try to cut it down to the most important pieces. It gets easier to decide after a while. In the beginning, everything is equally special!
I remember my mom saving every single paper that I brought home from Kindergarten. I have no idea if she still has them.
With my first child, I saved everything he brought home from preschool.
With our youngest I only save the really good stuff.
We have an old filing cabinet in the basement with 4 drawers, one for each kid. Anything they want to save gets put in their drawer.
Last week two of the kids went through their drawers and picked out things they liked and put them in page protectors in three ring binders.
See, I held out on the scrapbooking, and now they're doing it themselves!
Seriously, 4 kids = a TON of papers! My kitchen counter is never clean because of all of the stuff they bring home from school.
Max feels that every paper that he makes any type of a crayon mark is worthy of being hung on the refrigerator. Every time we open the fridge, at least three papers fall off.
My boss keeps a craft box for each kid for each year.
That's a good question. My mom has 9 kids, so I'll have to ask her how she decided what to keep.
I keep things that are especially great in once box in my closet and then once in a while let them go through it and keep what they still want. And I think some things stick as definitely keepers :-)
Considering we had to move out of the Taj Majal into the suburban tract house, yes, I've had to Be Selective. I do save quite bit, but I've winnowed it down to about a file box for both boys per school years. The older they get, the smaller the toys and stuff to save, but it still means so much. Thanks for sharing your son's great art work, that's a keeper! That reminds me, some of my friends photograph things they don't have room to store.
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