What can I do with my Child's Artwork?

If you’re like most parents, you save each and every scrap of paper your little Picasso has left his or her creative mark on. As school starts and seasons change, you may come to realize that the pile of precious artwork is growing at an uncontrollable rate. Now you are faced with the conflict of how to store your child’s artwork. While you treasure each and every piece, you realize that it just isn’t possible to save everything. Here are some creative solutions to storing and preserving these precious memories for all to enjoy.

When you’ve run out of room on the fridge, the easiest solution would be to purchase a plastic bin labeled for each child and stacking that child’s keepsakes in it by year. While this is a great solution, chaos and hurt feelings might be imminent with the casual tossing in of very important efforts or accomplishments on behalf of the child. Even if you dedicate an entire bin to a year's worth of work, it may still not be enough space.

A nice way to showcase your child’s brilliance while building self-esteem would be to hang the artwork in a noticeable location. Special adhesive tape or putty applied to the back of the pictures for wall hanging will make later removal from painted surfaces easy. To make the area look more professional, try framing the child’s artwork in an inexpensive frame or series of frames. A fun idea might be to switch out the artwork by season or age.

A unique solution for displaying your child’s artwork is to incorporate it with the theme of a specific room. Drawings of cars or trucks can be hung in a garage or work shed, works of art including fruit or vegetables can be attractively displayed in the kitchen, and bathrooms are good spots for ocean scenes. A great look for a laundry room, or mudroom, is a clothesline secured to the wall by tacks or nails. Then hang the pictures with the clothespins.

Modern technology has made it easier for parents who want to avoid the hassles of storing bulky items. Making a memory book using digital photos taken of each piece of artwork is a good way to start. You can burn the pictures from a digital camera onto a CD for compact storage, and print them onto pages that can be stored in a binder safe guarded with page protectors. There are also many websites that offer services of making bound books out of uploaded photos from your computer. This would make a nice coffee table book or even a memorable keepsake for the child later in life.