Keep Home Simple: Organizing Children's School Work

Right now, we're right smack dab in the middle of two things: tax season + spring cleaning.

A little while ago, these two worlds collided perfectly for me.

I was browsing through Goodwill and found these new cardboard box organizers.

They were advertised as "a great solution for getting organized this tax season".

Yes, it was true, they would be good for that. But I had a different purpose in mind.

I bought three of these boxes (at 1.88 ea.), added a Martha Stewart Sticker to each one, and then labeled each one with my child's name.

What a perfect way to keep all of their school work organized (past & present)!

One of my pet peeves is piles of paper.

I'm constantly battling them.

Now, as far as school work goes, my battle is won!

I know some people choose to keep each and every paper their child brings home: from completed homework, to spelling tests, to art projects ...and they do this for each and every grade.

I don't. I throw most of it away (and I don't feel guilty one bit for doing so).

For each grade, I keep just a handful of my children's BEST art projects for the year, a few samples of their writing (one or two from the beginning of the year and one or two from the end of the year), and I keep the progress reports that their teachers give us at each parent/teacher conference.

My oldest daughter is in third grade and so far all of her stuff (k-3rd grade) fits nicely in just one half of this box.

When my children are grown, I will give them this ONE box of school papers and not an ounce more.

I think it will be fun for them to look back at all of the highlights of their school work, instead of having to deal with where to store boxes and boxes of old school papers.

Because honestly, how often do you really look through your old school papers?

While they are fun to have, I don't think they are something my children will look through very often. :)