Dealing With Kid Paper Clutter

Despite schools adopting more technology and digital instruction, there was still quite the avalanche of papers that came home daily with my kindergartners this school year.  As someone who doesn't like a lot of clutter, I made it my mission to stay on top of all the school papers this year.  I wanted to get some systems and routines in place that I can stick to throughout the rest of their school careers.  Having those routines and systems in place will cut down on some of the daily decision-making that can overwhelm me.

The first thing I have my kids do when they come home is to hang up their backpacks.  Adam added this set of hooks before the kids started preschool and they are still just as pretty and functional as the day he installed them.  After I get the kids settled with a snack, I go through their backpacks.  As they get older, they can do this step themselves.  But as kindergartners, I just do this for them.  I immediately put their lunch trays in the dishwasher and their lunch bags in the cabinet.  Then I take care of allllll the papers.  Lyla neatly placed all her papers in her folder each day, whereas Archer just wadded up his papers and shoved them in his bag.

 

From there, I put the papers in one of four places.  For papers that I needed to reference at a later date (like class newsletters, flyers about upcoming school events, or papers with login information) I clipped on the side of the refrigerator.  I just got two heavy duty metal magnetic clips and wrote each kid's name on one in Sharpie.  This way, I always knew where to find the important papers.  

Any schoolwork or artwork, I clipped onto our metal clothesline that lives in our kitchen.  I put this up when the kids were just babies and kept ripping their artwork off of the fridge.  It continues to be a great way to showcase all their creativity.  Since we can see it from our kitchen table, it serves as great talking points during dinner.  Adam and I can ask about their pieces and it helps jog the kids' memories about what they did in school each day.   

The other two places I put their daily papers in is the trash can or the recycle bin.  Sometimes we wound up with other kids' work or flyers that didn't really apply to us.  So those items immediately went into the recycle bin (paper, cardboard) or trash (things with stickers,tape or glitter can't be recycled.)

Eventually, our clothesline would get pretty full so I would pull everything down and sort through it.  I kept only the most precious items and threw away or recycled the rest.  Those few precious items went into a file box I keep in each of the kids' closets.  I put a file folder for each grade to keep just a few items for me to look through in the future and for the kids to have when they are older if they want them.  My mom asked me awhile back if I wanted several boxes of schoolwork of mine she saved and I just didn't.  I am not a sentimental person and just didn't want more stuff.  So keeping a small file box per kid seems manageable for me.  As I added more items to the file box, I would often get rid of items I had previously saved.  There is probably about 7-10 pieces I saved per kid from their kindergarten career.  One other thing I did was make up a sheet for each kid where I could include their picture and record their school, teacher, friends, favorite subject, favorite part of school, what job they want when they grow up and a place for their signature.  

Those simple steps really helped to combat all the school clutter this year.  It worked well, so I plan to continue when they move into first grade in the fall.  I'm sure this summer they will be creating far more artwork.  To manage all the artwork they create here at home, we have two places for them to keep their creations.  They each have an "art box" in their closet which is just a plastic lidded bin.  If it gets full, they have to go though it to make space for new creations. 

They also each have some wood strips with clips that Adam whipped up for them in their rooms.  They can display anything they want on here.  If definitely helps the kids to have some physical boundaries for places they can put their creations.  I'm sure as they get older and want to add posters to their walls, we'll revisit what we're doing now.  But as kids who can easily end up with twenty pages of artwork each day, this helps us to keep from drowning in paper.  And at this stage, their artwork is more about the process than the finished product.  I certainly encourage their creativity and provide lots of opportunities to make lots of different types of artwork.  

Hopefully these ideas can help out others who might be drowning in stacks of paper on their kitchen counters.  Best of luck to you in this never-ending battle against paper clutter!