Page Protectors ~ A Girl's Best Friend (Keeping Kid's Artwork Under Control)

Years ago I had to come up with some viable option to keep control of my four kids' artwork. I only had three with artwork at the time because Caboose was an infant, but it was still everywhere, and a file folder just wasn't cutting it, because I tried that. So I went to Sam's and bought a four-pack of 1" D-ring binders and the big whopping pack of 200 page protectors (which is under $10 there and at most discount clubs). I used my trusty label maker to put each child's name on the outside of their binder along with the title "Artwork." That was necessary, because these are not the only binders in our homeschool closet. And to digress for a moment, I heart my label maker. It is a best friend of the chronically organized OCD personality. Back to the binders, the only thing this doesn't work for is 3D items or super large things that can't be folded in half easily. Here are a couple of pictures of some older artwork, and the kids love these because they can flip back through them. It's kind of like a scrapbook for them. I also put dates in pencil on the back, and I don't let them make stuff just to put in the binder. It has to be quality.

If there is a really special school paper they have done, I will also put it in here for safekeeping.

I also use page protectors in my recipe binder to keep recipes I've pulled from magazines, people have copied for me, or that I have printed from the internet. I use them in my homeschool binders for certain things that will be used for a number of years and need to withstand time. I use them in my "control journal" or "household notebook" to keep things in each section easy to find, as opposed to keeping it in just a pocket divider. I use them to keep scrapbooking idea pages in a binder. The list is really endless. And you can reuse them. I've rarely thrown away a page protector.

To see what works for others, visit Works-For-Me-Wednesday at Rocks in My Dryer.