Each week as the kids bring home papers from school, I store them in a big drawer, David on the left and Brooke on the right,  until I get a chance to decide what I want to keep and what I need to toss. As you can see, by the end of last year, it was jam packed.

You know what that meant. With school starting next week, I had to do a major clean out. The only problem was trying to figure out what to do with the “keep” stack.

For the last few years, I had been putting all of David’s papers in a separate folder at the end of each school year and stacking them underneath the current year’s papers.

Obviously, eventually there would no more room to keep everything in the drawer, especially now that Brooke is starting her second year of preschool and has her own papers…and I don’t have another extra drawer.

In an attempt to find a solution, I remembered that I had an extra expandable file box tucked away in my office.

It made for a simple and organized solution.

I labeled each tab with each school year, with the last one for report cards. Plus there are several open slots in the back for other items that might come up through the years.

Not only will this help keep the kids’ papers organized, but will also help me keep the amount of papers I save to a minimum.

My goal is to only keep extra special papers, as well as, a little something to remind me of their creativity, drawing skills and  penmanship during the school years.

Well, how about that! Looks like I’m ready to start a new year. The drawer is once again empty!

How do you organize your kid’s school papers?

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One Comment

• Adonna says:

  February 27, 2012 at 10:53 am

  Oh wow do I love this idea. Somehow, I just have to make an empty drawer to start this idea. For now, they always seem to end up in a stack on the corner of our dining room table. Ugh.

  I love the thought of perhaps giving each of my 2 kids an expandable file of their own to store work that they are proud of. Eventually, they will have to learn to thin them out (which is a good skill to learn).

  It may seem really simple but your idea would save alot of frustration at our house! Thanks for sharing this.

  Reply

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