It’s so exciting and adorable when your tiny kiddo throws on their puppy-shaped backpack and heads into daycare or preschool for the first time, but one thing you might not realize is that those sweet little bags will come home bursting with artwork every single week. It’s a lot. No parent has ever wished their child brought home more art projects from school—and the struggle to figure out what to do with the growing piles of handprints and scribbles is real. As their art gets slightly more sophisticated, the exercise is even harder!
Aside from holding on to a few sentimental pieces, what do we do with all of it? The name of the game is to set up systems for your budding Picasso now so you can manage the flow of art as they grow. From art frames to photo books, you’ve got options. Here are a few of our best tips so you aren’t living under a mountain of your kid’s artwork:
Create a space
Set aside a landing zone for your kiddo’s art and a display area where your favorite pieces can live. This can be a string with some clips that hold up choice pieces, a wall in a communal area like the kitchen, a bulletin board in their room, or any other dedicated space that works in your home. This will help you set boundaries on how much comes in and what can stay because once that space is full or the clips are all used, decisions about what stays and what goes need to be made. Try not to choose a huge space like a closet, because you’ll only fill it up and then have to go through piles and piles of art down the road.
Make the hard decisions
Decisions can be hard—for you and your kids—so we recommend taking a photo of the sculpture, drawing, or painting with your child to help them let go of the physical piece. This helps ease the separation for your kids, who can always look back on the photos and have something visual to review. Make these decisions as you go—it’s much easier than going through months of artwork all at once.
Turn them into a book
If you want to preserve the art in the long term, consider making a photo book with your own photos. You can create annual art albums in your Tinybeans journal and effortlessly turn them into photo books (we pull all your photos into layouts, along with the captions!). These beautiful coffee table-worthy books are a fun way to remember all the ages and stages of childhood.
Hang your faves on the wall
We’re all over the new crop of art frames that let you display a rotating selection of your little’s masterpieces on the wall. They come in all different colors to suit any space and also act as storage for your favorite pieces, since you can leave them in the frame until it fills up (then transfer them to more permanent storage).
Keep the keepers
Label the pieces you decide to keep with the year they were created and place them in a large portfolio bag or binder for paper art and a plastic bin or collapsible utility crate for larger, sculptural pieces. Depending on how much art you decide to archive, you can dedicate a portfolio to just one year or a group of years (like pre-K, K – 4, 5-8, 9-12). Just make sure you label the individual pieces because it’s a lot more fun to look back if you know what year it was created.
Gift them to the fan club
Grandparents, uncles, aunts, family friends… they probably don’t realize just how much art comes through your door, so it feels really special for them to receive a tiny bean original. Shower loved ones in one-of-a-kind birthday cards, drawings for the fridge, and display pieces they’re sure to treasure.