Watch the replay here!
Today’s organizing expert interview was packed FULL of incredible tips, ideas and suggestions! We not only covered methods to organize your collection of children’s artwork, but more importantly HOW to sort and widdle down the collection to what is truly special and worth keeping.
I had the great pleasure of speaking with Amanda Clark of Ever So Organized and it’s an interview you won’t want to miss. This is a pain point for every parent because we bounce between the emotions of loving it all and wanting to keep it…but also struggle with the volume and the decision of what to keep.
With the huge amount of content we covered I wanted to share the big takeaways, which will be helpful if you don’t have time to watch our jam-packed 1 hour conversation.
ABOUT AMANDA
Amanda is the owner of Ever So Organized®, based in Orange County, California. She specializes in helping busy families declutter and create beautiful, functional and organized spaces as well as implementing systems like the keepsake box to help them better own their time and spaces.
I knew Amanda would be a great organizer to speak with about this topic because she was a technology and elementary school teacher for 15 years…so she can definitely relate to ALL that artwork coming home from our children’s classrooms. She now stays home with her 3 young children.
You can watch the interview replay here on Crowdcast or find the live stream from Facebook right here…
TOP TAKEAWAYS
What is your WHY??
Of all the takeaways from this conversation, this could be it! We all struggle with what to keep but for a lot of parents it’s very difficult to get rid of all those special school and sports memories. Trophies, certificates, 3-dimensional art pieces from pre-school and kindergarten. So when it’s time to begin deciding what to keep, ask yourself WHY. I love when she said “Yes, that’s really cute, but is my 25 year old going to like seeing this later?”. It’s a great question to ask as you sort.
Hear more of Amanda’s WHY suggestion beginning at 9:30 of the video…
How to store the special keeps?
Amanda has a great keepsake box idea you can replicate at home with a weather-tight bin and legal hanging files. She shared a close-up look inside hers during our session but you can see another look here…
What can you do with the keepsakes you’ve decided you aren’t going to keep?
These days you have great options! You can create a Chatbooks or you can send your items to artkive to be professional photographed and turned into something extra special. Amanda shares her Chatbooks in the session as well.
What can I do with trophies?
This is always a tough one but I loved Amanda’s idea of giving each child their own trunk. The trunk is a spot where they are able to keep larger keepsakes that are special to them…but the collection needs to fit within the limits of the trunk. This could be a favorite dance outfit, special trophies, halloween costumes – the oversized items they want to keep, but tucked away safely and neatly.
Another idea for trophies is removing the name plate and keeping just that portion of the trophy in a keepsake box or trunk.
Other Great Tips
Get your kids involved and ask them what’s special to them and what they would like to keep – you may be surprised!
This generally works for most of the families I declutter with, but giving yourself some time and space between the decision of keeping / tossing can be very helpful. Even if you put it in a bin and revisit it in the next year or so, you’ll be amazed just how much artwork or papers you won’t feel attached to anymore. You may have felt a reason to keep it all those months ago, but not now.
If this is a project you’d like to work on right now but have children at home and find you don’t have large chunks of time, plan to do this project in 30 minute increments. You’ll be amazed how much you can get done in 30 minutes. Maybe try to work on it a couple times a week during nap times or “free time” when the kids are watching a show after lunch. Find small pockets of time to get ahold of the paper. We are all struggling with the time to get it done…but the most difficult step is getting started. And it’s totally ok to get started no matter how small the leap.
I had the best time chatting with Amanda! A big thank you to her for joining me this week!
Really looking forward to tomorrow’s session where we will be speaking with Karen Kruzan about how to manage anxiety from home during this time. This is the link to join our session tomorrow and here’s the blog post where I shared the details about our entire week’s schedule!
See you guys then!
xx,
Sam
comments +