As I mentioned In part 1 of 2 (blog post found HERE), children need a place for everything in their room. Take notice of the items that are always left out - and find a home to contain those items. Something that gets left out at my house (by my child!) is all types of papers. School papers, coloring pages, sticker sheets... (you name it)!
Artwork, school work, coloring pages etc ... are things that kids are proud of and like to hold onto. (Honestly, kids' papers drive me crazy because there's SO much!) If you can create a place for your child to keep their papers - that will cut down on a major part of the clutter around your house!
I think it's necessary to have two different places to store the papers: the first would be a temporary holding spot and the second would be a long-term file box for true keepsakes.
The temporary holding spot would hold coloring pages and school work that may seem special to your child on the day they color the page or bring the work home from school. As you can imagine, that temporary holding spot is going to fill up quickly and will need cleaned out often. One week's worth of "special" papers might cause the container to be stuffed full. At whatever point the container becomes full, go through the stack of papers and purge the pieces that are not really special. Let me show a few ideas for creating temporary storage for your child's papers:
When you have too much of anything, none of it is really that special. Holding onto the most important pieces is what makes those things true keepsakes. The second type of storage I mentioned was a file box for holding onto papers long term. The papers saved in this type of piece would include certificates. awards, special artwork or writing pieces done by your child... but not everything! You would choose only the best and most special treasures to keep in this box, because you'll want to fit several years worth of keepsake papers inside.
The inside of this file box includes a hanging file for each season of a child's life, from before their birth, and all the way through high school graduation. You can see why saving only the most special items would be necessary in order to fit everything throughout someone's childhood.
Things I would store inside of these hanging files include: ultrasound pictures, baby's footprints & handprints, growth measurements from doctor well-check appointments, papers that show the first time my child wrote his or her name, preschool graduation certificates, school pictures, report cards, special writing and drawing pieces etc.
Having a place to put these pieces as they come home is the key to keeping them nice, and knowing where they are when you want to find them. I store file boxes for my children up high in their bedroom closets.
I'm offering these file boxes for sale, completely assembled with 20 hanging files inside (17 of them pre-labeled), with the child's name on the outside. A file box would make a great baby shower gift as parents-to-be have special papers / pictures for their child before he or she is even born!
Click HERE for more information on ordering a file box. Currently these are only available for local pickup in Mesa, AZ... but I am working on a way to ship for non-local customers.