Do You Keep All of Your Childrens' Classwork?

Honestly, no I highly doubt they'll look through any of it. Well maybe once. It sounds like the beginning of a hoarder's episode.

Take pics of the best artwork. Display a few for a couple of weeks. Pitch the rest.

And don't keep any of the classwork.

Sorry if this was already stated. I have a crate for each kid. In that crate I have a hanging file for each grade of school plus preschool. I keep a handful of really important papers/drawings the kids did in school and put it in there. I also put their class pics, any certificates/ribbons they earned or programs with their names in them. I also put bday cards from grandparents too. Anything you want from that year. And then it only takes up space of a crate on a shelf.

I keep the occasional piece of art. I put it on the fridge or one one of our walls. We have a wall in the kitchen with 3 or 4 pieces from each child. I rotate them out as something new comes home. Everything else goes in the recycling bin. Once art work comes off the wall, it may or may not go in the bin. I've been known to keep a couple of things here and there.

I just don't see the point in keeping things. My parents never kept my things, and I'm very grateful. I mean what am I going to do with my old papers from kindergarten? If they had kept them I would have just pitched them myself.

My MIL kept all of her report cards. Why? My husband doesn't want his mom's report cards!

Personally I would get rid of it. It's just going to mean more work for you, and what are you going to do with it anyway?

ETA - I forgot about report cards. Those I keep.

I trash 95% of it as soon as it comes in the door. I look it over first of course.

I save some of the writing if it is funny or personal, and the more exceptional or cute art. I put it in a flat storage bin that goes under the bed. So there are maybe 20 things, tops, from each school year.

I don't save any math or worksheets or tests, practice work...Just special stuff or writing and drawing that was a good example of their skills at that age.

I keep important things, meaningful art and report cards, but the rest gets chucked. My mom saved much of my schoolwork and I've not looked at it in years.

well, i did.
then we moved. and i pared it down.
then we homeschooled, and i reorganized.
then they moved out, and i tried and tried to get it all down to one small rubbermaid tub each.
still haven't got it that far, but both of them have told me they don't want it, and it's not like i go down to the basement and pore over it.
except when i try to get rid of it.
sigh.
khairete
S.

Oh no way! Although it grates my Historian and teacher tendencies to do so, all school work goes in the recycling or garbage within a week of entering the house, unless it is something special. Not every math sheet, doodle, crossword puzzle, etc is special. Most is completely ordinary work done by millions of children every year--my kids' 4+3=7 isn't that impressive. Now, when they get older and start to work on their own projects and papers I will encourage THEM to save them, but I'm not going to stress myself out over it.

I speak as the child of borderline hoarders. When I was in high school I streamlined my parents' school paper system and gave each of us 5 kids a section of ONE drawer of a file cabinet. I have a few items from pre-school, elementary, and middle school in there, as well as my certificates/diplomas in there. More than enough for me. I haven't looked at any of it in over 10 years.

Yes, in my opinion it is worth it - to a certain point - I don't think you need to save everything!! I love that my Mom saved some stuff from my school days and I have shown these to my kids and we've all had a good laugh looking thru them. I figure my kids will some day want to do the same thing, so......

Every year I pick out a few papers, projects, etc. that I want to save (or they'll pick out some) and put them in one of those big pocket folders - the kind that look like giant envelopes - then for each child I have one of those plastic storage bins - every school year is labeled so if they want to pick out a particular year, they just go to their storage bin and there it is. Additionally, in their folders go their report cards, class pictures, etc., so I know exactly where everything is every year. I throw in some cedar blocks to keep out any kind of bugs and this has worked out great for us.

Good luck!!

I look at it like paycheck stubs. At the end of the year, I receive a W-2 which shows my total income for the year. The pay stubs can go in the shredder.

Yes, I save her work for the trimester. By the end of the trimester, we have fixed all the errors or completed all incomplete work. Then it all goes in the trash.

My mom saved everything! When I moved out she was like don't you want all your school stuff?? Um, no. Never saved anything for my kids, would you believe they don't care either.

It seems like such a cool thing to do but kids generally don't care.

I suppose if the technology had been there I may have scanned some of their artwork.

Oh a funny thing, my girls on their own kept journals. I think they are taking them to their grave. Ask your kids what they would like.
______________
Don't worry about paper mites, they don't exist!

"Complaints about bites and rashes for which a specific cause cannot be found are often attributed to so-called (and non-existent) "paper mites" or to one of the other mites mentioned above, particularly scabies and bird mites."

I never saved school work. I saved some of my kids art work but there's just too much to save and not enough storage space. Keep the really good stuff and toss the rest.

I would use some of the simple, one-page art work to use for greeting cards for grandparents or birthday cards for the kids' friends. They love receiving it and I don't have to toss it. You can use it to decorate gifts too.

Wow.
O. semester's locker clean out here produced about 3 reams of paper.
I kept elem. scho stuff---judiciously chosen. Not all of it.
This year? Keeping very little.
As others have said middle school is a new ball game.
It goes right to recycle.

I recently found a big folder of stuff my mom had saved and it was so cute to look at it, but then I thought…uh what am I supposed to do with it?! :) Pitch it, seriously, it's okay. ;-)

I take pictures of all my kids stuff. I have an e-file of them (each one has their own) inside my Snapfish account and I just drag and drop the stuff into it. I physically keep all the little things with their hand prints on it, because well, it's adorable. :)

After that, I recycle everything else.

I save a few nice art works and poems/stories they write and the rest goes in the trash. I just can't save all of it. It would be way too much

With four kids? As if.

Pitch anything that doesn't show your kid's personality. Take pictures of any artwork that is special and won't fit in a regular folder. Save stories written by them. I have some cards i printed with their art work. Look on Pintrest for other ideas. I didnt save any math. You are right, what you are doing now is not going to work long term.

We save the cute things or special art projects. I sort through the papers as soon as it comes in the door: keep, recycle (most classwork), talk about with child and then recycle (interesting lessons), to-do (action items for mom's signature or whatever). If I have questionable papers, they go in a nice looking basket/bin and we hold them until a few months later and then sort through and recycle 90%. I do a three ring binder for each child with artwork I want them to be able to look through and keep. Then for extra special or larger pieces we have a nice archival box. I try to keep that to the bare minimum, because I know they won't want everything and probably will only want one box to haul around when they are older. My husband got a box of school work recently from his mother and it was almost all covered in mite dust. Yick! Don't save anything with macaroni on it!

I save class pictures, report cards, awards and a sample of artwork and written work. For written work I try to keep a story, poem or a speech they have written. My mom kept pictures, awards and report cards and I have looked at them from time to time. I wish she had kept some work samples. My grade four teacher recently showed me a sample of my work she had kept for 30 years and it was really neat to see it.

You don't need to keep every little scrap. Why not just name and date it and switch to individual bins for storage.

I still think you should pick out the very best, most special stuff, date it, and put it in a binder. You will be happy you did. The rest just throw in a bin. Or I like the hanging folder idea.

Sorry if this repeats any earlier answer but here goes: Every couple of months (not at the end of the whole school year) gather up all the visual stuff - the artwork, the dioramas, posters, etc. -- and take photos of the best. Gather several and take one photo of them all together. Then throw out the originals which take a ton of space, unless there are one or two great enough to keep and maybe even display. I know families who would have their kids pose with the kids' own favorite projects or posters and the mom would take photos and then they'd toss the projects.

As for papers -- if my kid writes a really good research paper or creative writing project, yes, I keep it. If you really have a space issue regarding storage -- scan the papers and toss the originals!

What I find harder to deal with are things like programs from ballets my daughter has been in or programs from events she's been part of, where she's listed in the program or her science team is listed, etc. Those are fairly bulky when you get enough of them over time, yet I feel like I want the whole program and not just a page ripped out of it! Maybe I should take my own advice and scan them but it's not quite the same....

My mom saved some homework and my report cards, etc. When she asked me if I wanted it, I told her to throw it out.

I do save some art, but I don't like clutter, and I don't like saving papers. We had paper mites once, and it took me eons to get them out of my books! I had to clean every page by hand, and I have a lot of books! ( we were in an apartment at the time).

My son can bring home a stick and I'll treasure it like artwork.

So yes, I keep every bit of anything he works on and/or brings home.

I date everything as soon as it comes home. It goes into a big bin underneath a table in the corner and at the end of the school year I just put on the lid, label it with the school year and store it. If I want to go through it or looking for something specific its easy to find because everything has a date on it and everything is already in chronological order.

Announcements and notices I toss. I don't need to know Mrs. Rutherford's class is collecting used rope for a class project and things like that.

My Mom saved most of my art projects and had the better pieces framed.
They look great!
Some of our son's art projects are framed too.
We don't save everything but the stuff we have saved looks wonderful and we're happy to hang them on our walls.

I'm not overly sentimental. I didn't save her baby teeth, and I didn't save her first lock of hair.
The only art project of my daughter's that I saved was a t-shirt that she painted for me for Mother's Day. It's now over 2 decades old, still fits, and I still wear it.
As an adult, I can tell you that I have never felt the desire to go back and take just one more look at the handprint turkey I made for Thanksgiving in kindergarten.

I keep the papers for six weeks. After the report card, it goes in the recycle bin. The special projects are kept though. I probably keep three special ones a year.

I'm in the camp that has saved some special artwork pieces and written items, but there's no way I am saving every spelling test, every math assignment and every scrap of paper she's ever written or drawn on. My daughter is only in first grade but the amount she brings home would be overwhelming if I did not toss it in the recycle bin. I will post something she gets 100% on on our fridge for a few weeks, and then that's it.

My mom saved a few things I did in school and I am grateful for it, because it was fun to look back at them, but if she saved every piece of schoolwork I ever did, I would think she was insane.

I used to take some of the bigger pieces of artwork and hang them on my sons wall. so that he had them up it was always a nice bright splash of color. I also had a bin that I put stuff into. But a lot of parents now are taking good photo's of the work and keeping an online photo book.

My kids pick what they want to keep and what they don't, we don't have time or room for 3 kids school work from every year. Sure, the garage could work, but no. We frame some of the artwork, keep some in a bin, and trash other pieces. The important thing for my kids is to let it be their decision on what we keep.

I keep most art work, and some stories, but other then that I recycle.

There's a great app called ArtKive ... You take pictures of the artwork and upload them to the ArtKive server. They're saved here, you can share them with family, and if you desire, you can have a book printed. I intend to do this annually for my kids when they start preschool. As for regular work, why save it? Save the best and trash the rest.

I do the same as you, put everything in a 3-year ring binder inside sheet protectors. I started when my son was 3 in preschool and now he's in kindergarten. I also do this for my other preschooler. I have 3 large binders currently filled. I know I'm going to have to stop soon because there's no way I can continue to save everything. I've started hanging up my son's current artwork for a month and take it down and put up the new stuff, some I keep and some I toss.

My parents recently cleaned out their attic and brought up all of my artwork from high school art class. While it was fun to look through it, I did find it to be a bit of a burden and have recently tossed most of it.

I have probably saved more than I should have, but we limit it to one box (about a boot box size) per kid per year (2 kids), although that limit has been unnecessary and the amount saved has dramatically decreased as they've gotten older. Once they hit middle school and high school we save a few special things per year--mostly essays and papers they've written. Many of them are on the computer too. And we save them more for us than for them. I assume they might end up tossing it someday, but now that our kids are older we enjoy looking back on some of their work. Although people have talked a lot about saving art projects, I actually treasure the writing projects the most. I love to see what they've been thinking about and writing about over the years. I don't do enough sorting, but I've learned to sort/toss as it comes home and then again when they clean out their lockers at the end of a trimester.

Do any of your children have any handwriting issues, or reading/writing issues? If so, you might want to hold onto some representative samples of their work (dated) so that you can go back and compare over time. Other than that, unless it is in some way "personal"... I don't see the need to keep it. I have a drawer stuffed full, however. There were a lot of art things...
And projects...

Once they hit middle school, what you keep slows down. It mostly is projects or aware certificates. Of course, I have one who likes to keep stuff and doesn't want to toss ANY of her work. :/

It does slow down over time though...

I save throughout the year and during summer I go through it. I save less then 1/4 of it and put it in a folder with prongs. That way they can go back and see what they did in a certain year. This has actually been helpful as my daughter can go back and see how much her writing has improved!

I keep anything that has drawings, hand prints or anything like that. I also keep all report cards and at the end of the year I keep anything that has teachers comments on it. I throw all else away. There is way to many papers to keep as I get overwhelmed with 2 kids. Kuddos to you for doing it for 3!