the school year purge ...

I have a love/hate relationship with the end of the school year ... I love the new-found freedom from schedules - but what I dread about it is the tidal wave of papers and projects that get sent home each June ... folders upon folders FULL of school work. Not to mention the piles of silly desk knick knacks. Times 2. Any moms of young school age kids recognize these school desk treasures? We seem to have thousands of them - I'm sure you do too ...

We zip these little desk treasures into a pencil case or two for neat and tidy storage at home - otherwise, they'd be everywhere. But as far as the flood of schoolwork? ... sigh ... facing the schoolwork purge process each June is always a tough sell for me - not my favorite way to spend a summer day! So when a rainy day arrives, I go through everything they brought home, looking for a handful of special treasures to set aside and tossing out the rest. After I plow through it all and sort out the fun stuff, I have a huge pile that's ready for the recycling bin:

And what remains should theoretically be a handful of great 'keepers' from the school year. For my 5th grader, it's a total of about 10-12 things - some art projects and a few special writing assignments. For my 3rd grader, it's more like 15-20 keepers - at her age, the assignments still have a decent 'cute' factor. The very best one or two of their things get framed and hung (these are self portraits done on each girl's first day of 2nd grade):

... and the rest goes into their 'forever file':

Okay, so clearly we've grown from a 'file' to a 'bin' over the years, but this is where we are after several years of school! The above bin belongs to my 5th grader. The black bound collections at the bottom reflect everything from her preschool and kindergarten years - as you can see, it takes up half the bin since those earliest drawings and writing samples are irresistibly cute. The paper sizes at that age were generally huge and difficult to keep together, so I had my favorites (about 30-50 papers saved each school year) bound together each summer using a spiral to hold it all together.

Since 1st grade, most of her work has been on your basic 8.5x11 paper, so now I just put each year's 'keepers' into a separate colored folder (see middle of bin), marked with the school year, teacher, and grade. The yellow folder is the one I just put in for her 5th grade work. On top of that, the red box and the white one behind it contain some small memorabilia items from throughout the years (karate belts, swim test patches, etc). As you can see, the bin is now full and we'll need to start fresh next year (very fitting, since this is the end of elementary school for her). I'm pretty psyched that I have 8 years of her school work (grades 1-5, plus KG and PS) all sorted and organized, safe and sound in that one bin! Now I'll do it all over again for my third grader ... How much do you moms out there tend to keep after a school year? Anyone have any other storage solutions for your kids schoolwork?