Our basement is out of control.
This time last winter, we were renovating the apartment downstairs from us, and the basement space which used to serve as my atelier quickly turned into a catch-all of reno-stuff. Boxes of nails, and tiles, and electrical bits and pieces. Buckets of plaster, and paint. Extra two-by-fours. Extra doors.
There are toys we don’t have space for upstairs, like an enormous bin full of wooden train tracks, and large trucks, and sleds. All kinds of stuff.
And than there’s the children’s artwork. You know, the large-scale pieces of paper with the first attempts at finger-painting… paper towel rolls fashioned into shaker instruments… a feather and some googly-eyes pasted onto construction paper with an added popsicle-stick for no reason whatsoever… dried bits of salt dough that *might* have been shaped like hearts, or frogs, or halloween witches, but *actually* look like brown lumps of poo, covered with festive glitter. (Lord, do I ever hate glitter – that stuff stays with you forever. Like bad luggage.)
There’s just SO MUCH of it! Every week, it seems like there are another six or eight pieces brought home. Of course, I do the appropriate amount of oohing and aahing, and my little artist and I will discuss what the item is (sometimes it’s just not obvious, you know) and what it was like using the medium, like paint, or clay or glue… Was it fun? Did you like that? I love how you used three kinds of green over here…
Some pieces go up on the wall for a while. If it’s sculpture, it hangs around on a table or a bookcase for some time, until something newer comes home to take it’s place. We have opportunity to change things up all the time, which is nice.
But what do you do with the stuff? I mean, it’s a lot of stuff. Let’s say five pieces a week during the entire school year, plus summer camp stuff, multiply that by two kids… look, I don’t have time for all the mathematics and whatnot – just believe me when I say it amounts to A LOT of stuff. There aren’t enough fridge magnets in the world, man.
I have a few designated storage boxes for the favourite pieces – one for each child’s crafts – but I’ve been neglecting the task for ages and ages now… especially since the basement has become a gigantic trash receptacle.
The artwork became a small mountain.
And so, in an effort to find the basement desk’s surface once again (it’s tax time – we have to FIND all the receipts and stuff, and they’re part of the mountain) I began the task of sorting – which I’m sorry to say quickly became the task of trashing. You just have to stuff it into a bag, and not look back.
Listen. There’s A LOT of stuff! And I kept plenty of things. Really, I did, but there will just be more, and more, and more of it. (I’ll bet more of it will come home this very afternoon.) I just can’t keep every single scribble, or every single bit of macaroni, or every dried lentil stuck to every Dixie cup, or strip of construction paper, with or without pipe-cleaner arms.
And I almost never keep anything with the dreaded glitter attached to it. *shudders*
Sidenote: if you ever do such a task, make sure you don’t leave the artwork at the top of the garbage in, say, the kitchen, where your artist might happen by with a stray wrapper or banana peel or something – he or she will begin crying hysterically because it was their faaaaavourite piece! And because they made it for yooooou! And they won’t believe for a second that you could be so callous as to throw all their hard work into the dump like that, you sinister, horrible, evil mother, you. (Don’t ask me how I know.) Do this while your artist is at school – trust me. Besides which, there will be another piece brought home tomorrow.
I do keep the favourites – both theirs and mine. The ones with the first traces of handwriting, or pieces with transcribed words from the artist attached by way of description. The first drawn faces that actually look like faces, or animals, or whatever. I write names and dates on the back, and slip them into white Ikea storage boxes with the metal corners.
I think it’s enough.
We can’t keep every single thing, can we? How do you sort all that stuff? Do you feel guilty, or do you skip away from the task with a light heart? I’m curious to know…
I love the idea of scanning them, so smart! I will often mail the art work to grandma/grandpa & aunts & uncles.
That’s just so smart… CD’s are the way to go, for sure!!
You will win the aniti-hoarder fight – I’m sure!! Good for you, lady…
I’ll start cataloguing with photos when the boxes get full… it’s the best idea ever.
Can’t EVER get caught!!
Hi Tracey,
I keep every piece of artwork from all 4 of my kids! No, I don’t live in a mansion. I do however have a scanner. I scan the masterpieces when they come home and keep files that I throw on CDs…1 for each kid.
I keep the art and the clean house!
Hayley
I keep very little, but I toss it right in front of them and often make them toss it – I figure it will help them not be hoarders in the future if they understand that we can’t keep everything (or I’m damaging them forever and they WILL become hoarders – hee). If they’re hesitant, we’ll take a picture of it. We’ve also been known to send some pieces to Grandma and Grandpa in the mail. 🙂
I basically take photo’s (been doing this since nursery school) and the really awesome pics go in the scrapbook. She is aware that I have not kept every single piece (there are some special one’s that I thought were pretty cool) so we have a couple in inexpensive frames as well that meant something to us both.
On a side note, I do keep all birthday cards she makes because my Mom and Dad have kept all the one’s I made for them. Those are actually small enough to fit in a decorative box and I really don’t ever want to throw them away.
My kids are no longer teeny tiny and understand we can’t keep EVERYTHING, so we periodically go through the art and keep the keepers in whatever large boxes we can find (boot boxes work well). For for fragile or multi-media pieces we take a photo and toss the item, unless it’s in good enough shape to display. We have still kept too much, but it’s getting better. The good news is once they are past kindergarten less stuff comes from school and you just have to contend with what they make at home, camp or outside art class (thanks Nancy! Though almost all those pieces are on display). Photos are great and when the kids are older they get that photos last forever and we can make an album of their art.
I’ve heard of people photographing the art and then tossing it. I seem to struggle with being that organized though. Right now I’m shoving them in a file to be dealt with later. I would like to have some that show a progression. Sigh, some day my organizing fairy (that’s you) will come.
All year long I take anything lovely from them and put it under the bed in a box for each child. Each summer I make a scrapbook of awards, memorable notes to santa, tooth fairy, cute things, great art etc
We have 3 of these for each girl spanning their lives so far. They are pretty fat
I take pictures of art work that is great but not easy to keep. Like the plastercine beaver damn and the mini world and the “structures” YIKES. I don’t have an East wing for this stuff.
throwing is gorgeous when you don’t get caught…..
Oh, we don’t do glitter. Ever. If it comes home from school with glitter on it (or oil – seriously, Vaseline “painting” in preschool science class!?!?!), then it gets the big grin, the “WOW, HONEY THAT’S AMAZING!” and then is escorted to the trash bin after dark. One time my daughter’s teacher sprinkled glitter in the girl’s hair. My daughter’s hair. My daughter’s fuzzy, reddish-brown, freakin’ afro. All I could think was, “Lady, you have no idea what you just did.” But that’s a rant for another day.
Also? You’re welcome. It’s a pleasure to read!
I’m with you, Laura… I’ll photo-logue the artwork at some point, but by age 18, I’m sure they’ll wonder why I even bothered with most of it. Ack.
I hate clutter too, Wife. 😉
Oh, I know just the type of folders… I just can’t save it all. Sometimes it’s a half sheet of paper with a squiggle, a dot, and a speck of the enraging glitter on it… into the trash, man. Sometimes, making smiley faces becomes the favourite thing for a while… and yes, we made them together, but I don’t need to keep more than, say, two of them.
Don’t make me start looking for your face on HOARDERS, lady!! (Good luck to you too! And thanks for reading… 🙂
Anny, you’re so smart – I love the “eco-side” of things. GREAT means of explanation!!
Dude, I soooo know what you mean. I have this little box of silver spoons that belonged to a grandmother… I do not want them, and I wish they weren’t in MY possession, because trashing them just feels… wrong somehow. Can you imagine a house-full of stuff? Your baby stuff?! Oy. My head hurts at the very idea. I get you. Totally.
I totally understand. After the appropriate ooh and aah time (which gets shorter every year), I take a picture of the artwork and then trash/recycle the art. All the artwork is sitting in a file on a hard drive, and when they are 18ish (or by junior high if they’re like me and not at all artistic) I will make them a photobook.
I hate clutter.
I’m a total sucker for kids’ artwork. It seriously causes me pain every time I have to recycle one piece of their thousand or so versions of their BEST WORK EVER. My kids are two and four, and we have a massive volume of artwork in piles, in cupboards, on the walls, on relatives’ walls, on desks at work, etc, etc. My solution? I bought ten of those big pocket-style file folders with the big flap lids. You know which ones I mean? They get a folder a year, and I have committed to getting the piles all sorted and stuffed before the end of tax season. (*sob*). I’m going to take Macro photos of whatever I love but can’t keep so at least I can reminisce over digital copies later. Most of my kids artwork has been done but us together – me and them, you know? So many memories, there. Anyway, it’s gotta be done. Or ten years from now it will be my sullen face premiering in an all new episode of Hoarders. Good luck to you!
Ugh. I hate doing that but it MUST be done. Don’t feel guilty, don’t look back, just do it! And should your kid find it in the recycle bin and start into the “it’s my favourite” and “I made it for you” routine, you can engage his eco side by explaining that recycling is part of the process that makes more materials for more art! It’s the art-o-system if you will ;0)
At the risk of sounding utterly INSANE, I will share my thoughts on this.
I DREAD the idea that someday when my mother has moved on to a better place, I will be stuck digging through sentimental bits of MY childhood that she held on to and that I will then hold on to because SHE held on to them.
For this morbid, morbid reason, I am pro all sorts of purging of stuff so that someday, when your loved one is gone, you don’t have to feel INSANE guilt about getting rid of things they kept – you can feel MINOR, immediate guilt.
Is that crazy?
I think it might be…
In the end it’s all stuff. We cling to it in a vain attempt to hold on to every fleeting moment. Fact is, the pictures are just expressions of how wonderful the people themselves were / are.