Every mom shares the same dilemma. What to do with all the wonderful art your child creates! Without strategies for display, organizing and editing, these delightful treasures will just pile up and become a burden of clutter. Here's my top 10 neat ideas on how to keep their art from becoming clutter.

1. Set policies on how much you are going to keep. For example, you might decide you want to keep only the top 10 20 pieces per year.

2. Edit regularly. Keep only the very best or most meaningful. Each day or week, pick your favorite. At the end of the month, pick the best of the month. That's the one that gets put in a scrapbook or in a special memorabilia box. Involve your child in selecting his or her favorite. This helps your child learn that not everything is worth keeping, which is a very valuable organizing skill to learn early on.

3. Go digital! Take digital photos of art you really love and recycle the rest! This preserves the art much longer. Paper eventually fades and tatters.

4. Create an album or scrapbook for each school year and include photos of the best art along with other projects.

5. Label the work. Mark the back of artwork you decide to save with the child name, date and the reason you kept it.

6. Create a revolving gallery. Create a space on a wall or other area that becomes a revolving art gallery. Use magnetic boards, cork boards etc. Provide one spot for each child and hang their photo or a name marker above their spot. Each time to you change the art decide if the old piece is worth saving.

7. Repurpose and recycle. Find creative uses for art work you dont want to keep. Use it as:
   • Gift wrap
   • Inserts for greeting cards
   • Drawer/shelf liners
   • Decorate containers to use as organizers for arts & crafts supplies
   • Creative disposal placements for a meal. Or, if its really good, mount it to construction paper, laminate it, and use the art as place mats for a longer time.

8. Get funky with clipboards. As an inexpensive and fun alternative to frames, use colorful clipboards mounted on the wall to create an art gallery for your childs room. Let them decide what they want to hang and when they want to change it. Clipboards allow them to easily change out art frequently.

9. Draw the line. Hang a clothesline across a wall in an area where you want to display art and hang it with clothespins. This makes it easy to change the art whenever you or your child wants to!

10. Make gifts.Create unique gifts for relatives with good pieces. You can make little books, puzzles, calendars, and more. Encourage your child to help think of ways to transform art into fun gifts.

2006 Ariane Benefit, Neat Living

Ariane Benefit

Ariane Benefit is a professional organizer, speaker, and author of the popular Neat Living Blog which provides free organizing tips, home makeover photos and much more.

Her mission is to inspire people to simplify, clear clutter, and get organizes so they can get things done easily, and have more time to enjoy the things they really love!!

Contact me at 973-429-2100 or abenefit@neatliving.org. Article or book writing requests are welcome! I am also available to provide content expertise to other writers.

Background: Having grown up in an extremely cluttered home and having moved frequently, I learned first hand how to overcome the need to keep everything. Being the first and only person in my family to go to college, I also learned early on how important it is to organize yourself to achieve your dreams and goals.

I am especially empathetic to creative people, people in crisis, people with ADD/ADHD, young people, students, packrats, sentimental collectors, people moving, merging households, and anyone who needs to downsize.

I have a Master's Degree in Education with a minor in Business and a Bachelor's Degree in Spanish from the University of Miami in Florida. With over 20 years experience in corporate performance consulting, I am also certified in Process Facilitation, Management Development Training, and Accelerated Learning Methods.

My personal and professional qualifications uniquely enable me to help people not only get organized, but acquire new skills and habits so they can STAY organized.

I am an active member of the National Association of Professional Organizers, the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization (where I am currently pursing the newly established Certified Professional Organizer designation), the American Holistic Health Association, and the International Society for Performance Improvement.

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