Get Organized Day 22 | Priceless Artwork

Speaking of sentimentality . . . This pile of artwork Julia brought home from preschool over the last year. I haven’t recycled any of it because really I love love love every inch of finger painted magnificence. How could I not, right? But the problem is that this pile has been growing and growing, and if it keeps up, then we might choke on the googly eyes and drown in the rainbow of colors. Plus, Max is just starting to bring home his own gallery of masterpieces, so I decided it’s time to have some sense of organization.

My first thought was that I’d scan it all in, and make digital copies, and then have a book printed with the images. But then I realized that I’d miss the 3-D of the tissue paper J and the fold of that jelly-fish’s legs. Plus, honestly, I don’t really have time to do all that scanning.

So here’s what I did do. I started by refining my pile a bit. The pages that weren’t original works or were just coloring pages filled in were deemed secondary. And if there were similar works, I got rid of one. There were two squares that Julia drew on with pencil, one of them didn’t make the cut. The works that weren’t paper size (like the jelly fish) were glued down to a single page. The pages that were super big were folded to fit a mostly standard size. Then I tried to put everything in some kind of order. Most of the works are seasonal-Fourth of July fireworks, turkeys, snowmen, Spring flowers, Ice cream cones, Easter eggs-so this wasn’t all that difficult. So now I have a nice, clean, manageable stack of work.

When the kids are healthy again, I’m going to take my stack to a copy center and have it bound. I might even make a cover for it. I figure that once a year I can round up the kids work, pick the keepers, and then put it in a similar size package. I can keep the best art from each year, and have it for, well, ever.

And yes, I know this goes against my sentimentality rules, but these finger paintings and scribbles are that important thing to cling to.