How to Organize and Store Your Kids' School Papers

Now that school is out, I feel like I have a moment to breathe and actually sit and wade through the mountain of school papers, photos and artwork that my kids have brought home over the course of the last year.

Does anyone else feel a certain amount of stress each week on folder day? I have three kids; so every Thursday I had a huge stack of papers to go through. I’ll just say this - it was not uncommon for me to realize that two weeks had gone by where I hadn’t read the latest newsletter and didn’t realize a field trip was tomorrow, simply because there were too many papers to weed through to find the important information (or because I purposely didn’t read them because there were just too many…).

But thankfully, all that stress is on hiatus until September.

Summer is the perfect time to take stock and organize! While I try to keep the important things from the year, it can be really hard to decide what school papers to keep and what to throw out. And once I do decide, how do I organize it all? Where do I store it?

Don’t worry friends, I actually have an answer to that!

Where I Store School Papers

For each of my three kids, I have a School Years Memory Book and one of our new Wooden Keepsake Boxes. All the memories get carefully organized and tucked away in here.

How I Organize School Papers

Here’s how I do it:

• I try to hold on to a couple of pieces of artwork, special assignments, and maybe a report card. Everything else gets thrown out.
• School photos get pasted onto the appropriate page for the year
• Papers and artwork get tucked into the year's corresponding folder
• I also fill out the info sheet in the book for that year so I can remember the details!

I love how the School Memory Book keeps everything organized by year!

But even with keeping just a handful of things each year, it starts to add up (and some things are too bulky for the folders in the book). When I saw my daughter’s School Memory Book (who is only in 2nd grade) was starting to bulge, I knew I needed more room:

So I decided that a Keepsake Box would be the perfect place to keep the extra bulky things that just didn’t fit well in her Memory Book.

I love knowing that each year I can continue to tuck papers away, and by the time they graduate high school, they will have a time capsule of their school years starting from preschool. How fun will that be for them to look back on years from now?

Our wooden keepsake boxes are handmade from solid pine in Idaho, USA. The slide top lid makes for easy opening and safekeeping when closed. The 12” x 12” x 6” size fits all of our Memory Books, including our Baby Books and our Kids Quote Book.

It’s the perfect place not only to store school memories, but also for tucking away baby mementos like their hospital hat and first pair of booties. It would also work great for a wedding gift or to hold treasures from your travels!

Now that the school year is drawing to a close, how will you organize the mountains of school paper?