The story below is from our September/October 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
The fridge isn’t the only place for your children’s art!
The first time you send your kids off to school, you may not be prepared for all the things they will bring back with them: new friends, facts and lessons they can’t wait to share, a fresh list of new songs to sing while they clean up or tie their shoes… and an absolutely astounding amount of art projects.
Nearly every day you’ll go to take their lunch box and folder with school announcements from their backpack only to find wads of semi-crushed construction paper, handfuls of painted popsicle sticks and loose googly eyes. Reams of printer paper will showcase drawings that range from Jackson Pollock-style mixed media pieces to a single pencil line so faint you might accidentally mistake it as an accident, tossing it into the recycling bin during your quick clean up. Woe is the parent who makes this fatal error in front of their child, who believes that all artwork belongs in their parents’ permanent collection. Before you know it, the refrigerator is a collage of paper, and you’re desperately piling everything else into storage boxes, or offloading it onto grandparents and aunties disguised as “special cards just for them.”
Artmaking is an essential part of child development, helping to foster creativity, motor skills and even aid in emotional regulation. But while the journey is so often the destination for these projects, you still end up with a lot of stuff at the end of it. The amount of art a child can produce will far outweigh them at the end of each year, and can easily take over your house if you don’t have a plan.
There are lots of clever storage solutions out there, but I personally like to take a different approach. Instead of taking up space keeping the stuff long enough for your kid to hopefully forget about it so you can safely throw it out, why not take this as an opportunity to 1) build a pruning practice with your child together and 2) treat a select number of works with the same care and respect as all of the other artwork and photos in your home?
The Three Pile System
One of the main reasons my daughter has been upset when I’ve given away her old toys and clothes isn’t because she still wanted them, but because I didn’t consult her. I’ve learned that the more I involve her in the process, the easier it is to keep her in developmentally and size-appropriate items without a huge meltdown. We have a basket in her closet where she puts clothes when she notices they are too small, and when it’s full, we go to trade in or donate the clothes and buy the replacements together. She loves to get excited about how much she’s grown and to plan for her new wardrobe.
When she started going to preschool and bringing home a pile of artwork roughly the size of a baby elephant each week, I knew we needed to adapt our current system.
Each day, we go through her backpack together. She tells me about the art, and it generally goes into one of three piles: “Showcase” for the pieces that are either truly great, well-made or that she is especially proud of; “Toss” for anything broken or destroyed in transit; “Store” for the rest (more on that later!).
Showcase
There’s the traditional refrigerator gallery, but you can also try a large corkboard, placing it either in a central location where it will get a lot of attention (like the kitchen or playroom), or even in your child’s bedroom. We took it a step further and bought a handful of pre-matted frames that hang in various rooms in our house. These are our daughter’s gallery frames, and every so often, she chooses a new artwork to showcase in the frame. It’s an easy way to showcase her work, and she is so proud to see them hanging throughout our home.
For especially prolific little artists, you can also hang a “gallery wall” of clipboards that they can switch the artwork in and out of. This can be as straightforward as actual clipboards, or you can create an easy and low-damage option with a corkboard and some mats that you can use as frames. Simply clip the mat over the artwork and pin to the corkboard in any configuration you like. White boards with magnets will also accomplish this same feat without puncturing the art! Alternatively, you can buy (or make!) a hanging display with fishing line, twine, or yarn and use clothespins to clip the artwork onto the lines.
For 3D art, designate a shelf or a spot on the mantelpiece or a particular table. A great bonus activity for any kind of showcasing is to create a label out of index cards with the artist’s name, the title of the piece, date it was made, materials used, and then any commentary your child has told you about it. Not only will this help document the details of the piece for you, but it will also make your child burst with pride. Super ultimate bonus activity: host an art opening!
Store
We keep all the undamaged art projects until the end of the school year, and then go through them together to look back and reflect on how much she’s grown. After going through everything, we document the pieces that she cares the most about, either scanning them or taking a clean and clear photo, with or without her in it. These images can then be compiled into either a digital photo album or printed into a physical one. Then, we each choose a small number to keep in an archival storage box. Everything else gets tossed.
Whether you print the photos yourself or find one of the many amazing companies out there that can do it for you (some will even take the artwork directly to make the archival art book from them!), this is another, low-space option for showcasing the work. With a photo book of the art, you can keep it on the shelf or the coffee table, and give your little artist another opportunity to show off their work!
Toss
Sometimes, it’s easy to get your kid to agree to say goodbye to their dried up, broken Play-Doh giraffe. And sometimes, it’s a real heartbreak. I try to think of it as a practice; it’s important to learn how to take care of your things, and how to reassess your belongings over the years.
It helps my daughter to have guidelines that make it clearer for her why some things get thrown out and others do not: If it’s torn or ripped or broken, that’s an easy one. If there are multiples of the same drawing, she chooses the best one and says goodbye to the rest. If it’s too difficult to store because of its size or shape, or if it has parts that might eventually fall off, we are always sure to document it. This helps if I can show her how I’ve kept a digital or hardcopy album of past artwork; she is more likely to understand that we aren’t making the piece disappear.
It’s Their Home Too!
I am a person who spends time and care organizing, designing and creating a space I really love, so it was a true adjustment to have it all overrun with hideous children’s ephemera in all the wrong colors. But my daughter lives here, and it is important to me that she feels like the space belongs to her as well as her parents. So rather than find a way to make her things disappear or sequester her to a single, far away location in the house, I made sure to integrate her books into our shelves, and set up play areas in the living spaces we use most.
Hanging up her artwork around the house gives her that sense of ownership and pride, and sends a clear and constant message that she matters to us, and that this is her home. And even though I can be a little, shall we say, particular about the aesthetic of my home, matting and framing the artwork instantly transforms the artwork from children’s scribbles into something elevated and special. It’s quickly become one of my favorite things about our home, and I am looking forward to continuing to build our private collection of our little artist’s life works.
The story above is from our September/October 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!