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Family Organizing | Kids/Families

The Simplest Way To Organize School Paperwork & Keepsakes

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The Simplest Way to Organize School Paperwork.

 

School has barely started and you likely have already started collecting all the paperwork that comes home with your child each day. It can feel like a hurricane of paperwork flies through your door each time you open it to let your child in. This post is for moms who want to find a simple way to organize school paperwork so that they can keep up with as the years go by.

Do You Want to Micro or Macro Organize Your Child’s School Paperwork?

If you love to organize and want your kids school work to be super (micro) organized, and don’t mind spending a lot of time on it, this post may not be for you. As a professional organizer with ADHD, I actually only macro organized my own kids paperwork because I knew that realistically, my kids would likely only be looking at this stuff every 5-10 years down the road.

If Like Me, You Have ADHD, and/or Don’t Have a Lot of Patients For Organizing School Paperwork, Then You Have Come to the Right Place.

Let’s start by discussing how much to keep and how much to toss. You know you want to keep and organize a select number of school keepsakes for your child to enjoy when they are older, but how much is enough?

kids school keepsake tote

Choose What Size Container to Use For Organizing School Paperwork.

Your child’s school work can accumulate at light speed as they grow. Control the amount you keep by purchasing one tote for each child. Choose a size that you are comfortable with.

You could choose a file storage bin like mine or a clear plastic tote that is about the size of a Banker’s box will work as well. Whatever size tote you choose, be sure is designed to hold vertical file folders. Let this tote set the limit for how much school paperwork and keepsakes are kept. 

Divide Your Child’s School Keepsake Tote Into 4-5 Sections 

Use a label maker or marker to label file folders as follows: Prek/Kindergarten, Elementary School, High School, and Other Keepsakes. The section labeled ‘Other Keepsakes’ is for memorabilia collected from activities that happen outside of school.

Activities such as Boy Scouts, baseball, and ballet classes are good examples. Optionally, you can also add a 5th section labeled Middle School. My children’s middle school was located at the same place they went to high school so I chose to keep it simple and make 7-12th grade all high school. Do what makes the most sense to you.

If you are a busy family, it’s all about keeping things simple so you can keep up.  Minimizing how many sections you create will require less work on your part to set the tote up. It will also be easier for your child to maintain over the years. We’ll talk more about that below.

How To Manage all Incoming School Paperwork & Other Keepsakes During The School Year

Assign a small paperwork collection bin to each child. Be sure the bin is at least 9″ x 12″ to hold a standard-sized piece of paper, and 6-12 inches deep. Place this bin in an easily accessible location, a bedroom closet or a mudroom are good options.

Have your child drop all incoming school paperwork into the bin every day after school. Let the rest of it accumulate here until the end of the school year.  If the bin fills up, periodically sift through and toss out old assignments that don’t need to be kept.

I did this every 3 months or so to make more room in the bin. At the end of the year, your child’s bin should hold mostly just the school keepsakes and artwork that they may want to keep.

Each Summer, Make Organizing School Paperwork & Keepsakes a Summer Project.

Each summer, I made it a summer project for the girls to go through their school keepsake totes. They would add the new keepsakes from the current year. As their totes filled up, they would decide what they needed to let go of. They would do this project together and actually looked forward to this project each summer. This is the perfect activity for those slow summer days when they complain about being bored. The best part…I enjoyed not having to do this job myself.

It encourages self-sustainability to let your children take personal ownership of their keepsakes. They will appreciate your trust in them to do so. Let them know that they can keep whatever they want, as long as it fits inside the tote you selected for them.

Instructions For Younger Children.

Yes, your young child will likely want to hold onto every cherished doodle at first. But as they get older, they will be ready to part with some of their scribbled masterpieces to make room for the newer artwork.

Younger children may need supervision with this project. Also, just to be safe…take a quick peek into the toss bag before heaving all the rejected paperwork into the recycle bin. 

Your child might not think much about that sweet story they wrote about their mommy when they were 6, but you might feel differently!  

Files for kids school keepsakes

What I Learned About Organizing Kids’ School Keepsakes as a Professional Organizer

When my daughters were young, I spent many of their growing-up years feeling guilty. I fretted over not having time to preserve and organize my kids’ school keepsakes and other memorabilia perfectly.

Looking back, I also remember having high expectations. I wanted to create a beautiful handmade scrapbook for every single year of each one of my children’s lives. I dreamed of filling them with photos, artwork, and other keepsakes to capture every memorable moment.

Let’s see, I did the math and with three daughters, by the time they would each reach 18, I’d have made 54 scrapbooks… LOL!

Kind of lofty expectations, don’t you think?

You Can Let Go of The Guilt

Fast forward several years….and I now know that these were seriously unrealistic expectations. I also know that when it comes to organizing school paperwork and keepsakes, it is best to keep it simple. And you need to keep less than you might think.

My Professional Organizing Career Actually Changed My Perspective Significantly.

Many of my clients who were empty nesters struggled with their adult children’s keepsakes too. I would often hear, “My kids’ keepsakes are taking up too much of my storage space.” They are often surprised that their children are less interested in their childhood keepsakes than expected. Or my clients hear this, “I want it Mom, but can you store it for me?

Let’s take a look into the future for a moment.

If you spend too much time fussing over and saving every scribble your child brings home, like my clients, you too might also end up with a storage room full of your kids’ school keepsakes someday.

Here is what you need to know…if you save several totes worth of your kid’s school keepsakes and other memorabilia, you might just get stuck with it forever. Your adult child likely will be okay with taking a few keepsake totes to their own home someday.  But if you have multiple totes of keepsakes, it may be too overwhelming for them to take home.

Conclusion:

Set reasonable and easily attainable goals for keeping and preserving your kid’s school keepsakes and other memorabilia so that you can keep up as the years go by. Your child will be satisfied enjoying a sampling of childhood memories rather than an extensive collection of every experience they have ever had.

To get more school organizing tips to help your family stay organized and in control as the weeks go by be sure to read my other post, “Top 10 School Organizing Routines for Stress-Free Family Mornings.”

The Simple Daisy Organizing
Laura Coufal

About Laura

I  am a Southern California turned small town, Midwest Mom. I am wife to Bruce and mom to my three girls.

Back when I first started my organizing journey in 2013, I had what I thought of as a dirty little secret. I have ADHD and although I am organized, and enjoy the process of sorting, and tidying. I knew that there were many others with ADHD who really struggled with staying organized. I had a case of imposter syndrome and mostly kept the fact that I had ADHD to myself. That is until I learned that there are other successful professional organizers who have also learned to compensate for their ADHD.

I eventually realized that my need for order and simplicity actually stems from having ADHD as a way to compensate for my short attention span. So my gifts and my challenges are all ironically tied together to create who I am,  and I am able to relate to and help others as a result of this coping method that I have developed for myself.

I help women and moms with ADHD, but I also help those who struggle with clutter without having ADHD.  Because simplicity and less clutter are always at the heart of staying organized, there is much overlap when it comes to finding solutions to clutter and disorganization.

I am dedicated to keeping my life as simple as possible and to helping others do the same by teaching them how to declutter their homes, simplify their lives, and manage their busy families better.

I have been helping others stay organized since 2013.

It is my deepest hope that you will find resources here that will bring you closer to living a simpler, more intentional, and more peaceful life. 

always have

something

beautiful 

in your space…

…but let it be

as simple

as a daisy

in a vase.

 

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