Those of you w/ kids, how long do you keep stuff?
The Kid brought home a ton of great artwork and schoolwork. I am really very proud of her, and it is exciting to see how she has improved over the months. I really very much for some reason am inclined to keep it all forever! The practical me says that we don’t have that kind of space, and WTP am I going to do w/ all of this accumulated work over the years?
So, Readerland, how long do you keep your kids’ stuff? Do you have any solutions? For now, I am photographing some of it, and have put some of it up at BaCaW in a Photobucket slideshow, but that is not a permanent answer.
I mean, how can I part w/ all of this?
Ouyang Dan
The Guy
I’ve still got stuff from my kids school years…and all of them are either in college or grown. Each year I whittle it down a bit when I have to clean out the closet where the stuff is. But it is PRECIOUS, I know!
I only save the really good stuff, but the really good stuff gets displayed just like my paintings do. We’ve turned the stairway into a Kid art gallery. Kid and I are pack rats already. If I kept everything, we’d drown.
Keep it all . . .forever. It’s not a piece of paper with paint on it. It’s an expression of their heart. Putting high value on the things they make tells them that you put high value on them.
I am a pack rat too. It is such a curse! The Guy wants to put them all over her room like posters.
papasteve, I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic…so I am going to pretend that you are. Of course I can’t keep it all forever.
But I do agree w/ RQ…I am trying to keep the really good stuff. I have to have some kind of weeding process or we will have no room to put the important things…like the Kid.
The good news is that the Kid knows she is important to us either way.
I have no kids, but I do still have some of the things from my own childhood - as do my parents. Not as many things I might have wished, but there’s not a whole helluva lot of room in the Secret Lair (aka ‘73 Winnebago).
Not being sarcastic . . .though maybe a tad hyperbolic. These little ones are very proud of their work and they give it to us from the bottom of their hearts.
Hey . . . you asked.
I recycle the majority of it and keep 3-4 items per year otherwise we would be overwhelmed with stuff. I figure when he is a teenager and done doing the art thing I can make a nice collage out of it.
save them and then when the time is right give them back to the kid let the kid know how much they mean to you.
I went through 10 years with my Ma where “what is this shit and why did you save it?”
And then she told me why and as impossible as it sounds I loved her even more
Seeing as how I lost all of their childhood stuff in the divorce, I keep EVERYTHING.
My attic is a mess.