Declutter Your Child’s Artwork: What to Keep and When to Toss, Where to Hang and How to Display

What to do with all of your little Picasso’s artwork? We’ve been there! Decluttering and organizing kids' artwork can be a challenging task for parents wanting to maintain a tidy and home while preserving their children's masterpieces. In this blog post, we’ll explore strategies for assessing, decluttering, and storing kids' artwork, as well as creative display solutions and preservation techniques. We also have some great resources who can help digitize your kids’ artwork.

Set Clear Goals for Decluttering

Define your decluttering and organizing objectives. Are you looking to create more space? Do you finally have the time to preserve precious artwork? Thinking about downsizing your home? Reflect on why you want to get organized and set clear goals that will guide you through this process.

Evaluate the Current Collection

You may want your children to be involved in the decluttering process as oftentimes kids may be a-okay with throwing out some of their art pieces. It’s a fine balance for parents to decide between cherishing every piece of artwork and maintaining a clutter-free home environment!

Before diving into decluttering, pause and look through all of your kids' artwork. Admire their masterpieces and identify pieces that hold sentimental value or showcase their creativity. Decide on criteria for keeping artwork, such as sentimental value, uniqueness, or thematic relevance.

How to Safely Declutter Your Kid’s Artwork

STEP ONE:

Checklist for things to let go immediately:

1. It doesn’t bring the child or you joy

2. Cards without a thoughtful note inside

3. Class Projects like posters, dioramas, or a sugar cube replica of the Roman Colisseum (hands up emoji, yep - that’s me!).

4. Soiled or moldy artwork

5. Items that are no longer meaningful

STEP TWO:

Questions to ask yourself on each item:

1. Do we have multiple copies or if this the only original?

2. Does the work represent an important stage in your child’s development?

3. Will this still be special and relevant in 20 years?

4. Is this special? An original painting or just a page our of a coloring book?
   

STEP THREE:

Now decide for each item:

1. Keep it - must digitize

2. Digitize it - then throw away

3. Donate or Toss it - no digital copy needed

Involve your kids in the decluttering process to teach them responsibility and organization skills. Encourage them to choose their favorite pieces to keep and let go of ones they no longer value. Make decluttering a fun activity by turning it into a game or art project. You can even host a "gallery opening" where kids can showcase their artwork before deciding what to keep or recycle. Just remember to be selective when decluttering to avoid accumulating too much stuff! Once your child has decided the pieces she wants to keep, then make a pile of the pieces that are important or have sentimental value to you. Merge these two stacks and put the rest in a separate pile (jump to “Before Throwing Away Artwork” below).

Choose Suitable Storage Containers

If you know anything about us at Madewell Designs, you know how much we LOVE to organize and utilize storage bins and baskets. When storing kids’ artwork, you’ll want to opt for storage containers that are durable, archival-safe, and easy to access. Consider portfolios, bins, or even digital storage options to preserve artwork. Aesthetically we love these solid document boxes from Container Store and they come in a variety of colors. Angie uses these 12”x12” clear portable plastic keepsake boxes from Amazon and she creates one box for each child and for each year. Thankfully these boxes come in large quantity packs. Ha! Angie creates a label for each box that clearly identifies which box belongs to which child. Kelly prefers the Ikea boxes and she puts each kids’ work into a ziplock bag by year and then puts the ziploc inside the Ikea box. It doesn’t matter which organizational system you choose, just make one and stick with it. Consistency is key here!

This is how Angie at Madewell Designs organizes her kids’ artwork. Link to storage containers are in the above paragraph.

Designate an Artwork Storage Space

Designate a specific area in your home for storing artwork. This could be a section in your child’s room, a gallery wall, or a special art corner where their creations can be proudly displayed and organized. Angie keeps her children’s artwork in her craft closet and Kelly keeps her kiddo’s artwork in the guest room.

Create Fun Display Solutions

There are several ways to display your child’s artwork. At Madewell Designs, we’ve used clipboards, wire systems, gallery walls and more. This not only adds a personal touch to your decor at a nominal cost, it also allows for easy display changes. We love the Hovsta frames from Ikea for gallery walls as they are a neutral slim frame at an affordable price. For a whimsical art display, try this wire photo hanger from Potterybarn Kids.

Pro Tip: We don’t keep the glass in the picture frame. We always remove the glass as it allows the piece of art to showcase the texture and depth.

Playroom utilizing the Ikea Hovsta frames to display child’s paintings and artwork.

Digitize and Preserve Artwork

You can preserve your child's precious artwork without cluttering your space by scanning items to create digital archives. This allows you to keep a record of their creations without physically keeping a copy. There are two ways to digitize: do it yourself or send your kid’s artwork to a company that will do it for you!

Digitizing is great because you can send a copy of the arts and crafts to Grandma! We also love this method because you can make a beautiful digital art book through Artifact Uprising or for a friendly budget, Shutterfly.

There are lots of services who offer digitizing children’s artwork like Artkive where you ship the arts and crafts to them and in turn Artkive will create a wall mosaic or book plus you get access to all the digital images. If you’re looking for a low-cost provider, check out Scribble.Art where you take the pictures of the artwork and they’ll create a book or even wrapping paper! We also like Plum Print where they can create all types of books including family cookbooks which is neat.

Before Throwing Away Artwork

When it's time to part ways with artwork, opt for eco-friendly disposal options like recycling paper-based creations or donating them to schools, nursing homes, or community centers.

Routine Maintenance to Keep Your Child’s Best Paintings and Art

Kelly keeps her kiddos’ artwork all year and then sorts through it each May. This gives her a little more space between projects so she’ll have some distance from loving a piece of art when it immediately comes home thus allowing her to somewhat emotionally detach from it. Angie discards along the way making it easy and much less overwhelming (she’s a true organizer!).