Kid art

Here’s a question for you - how much of your kid’s art do you keep?

During the first four years of being a parent, I kept things that were particularly meaningful or cute and (discreetly) chucked the rest because, frankly, I don’t have the space to keep everything, especially since both my girls love to draw and make crafty things.

Since my oldest started school, she’s been bringing home all kinds of interesting stuff. I’m planning to toss out the ones that are things like coloring in a print-out picture, but I want to buy a really big scrapbook to paste in actual arts and crafts that she does so that I can have one from each year.

A few years ago I was visiting my parents and my mother still had all my stuff from elementary school that I had created with so much pride. On the one hand I was thinking, “geez, you can get rid of it now!” but on the other, it was touching that she kept it. I know it’s not like she looks at it regularly and remembers what everything is, but just the fact that she felt it was important to keep makes me smile.

I think if I can keep it down to just one or two scrapbooks per year, I’ll be okay, because by high school they don’t really do as much in the way of arts and crafts. That will give me seven scrapbooks from Kindergarten through grade six. Err, I have two kids so that means 14 books.

Yikes.

But it does mean a lot to me.

What about you?