There are few artists more prolific that a child in grade school. Frankly, any professional painter or sculptor may only dream of creating as much work as your little one. While their creative process is a beautiful, positive thing that you encourage, you may be wondering what the flip to do with all your kid’s artwork when your kitchen table becomes a sea of papier-mâché and glued-on pom-poms.
“When children do art, they value it,” said Julie Lause, co-founder and Chief of Schools at Crescent City Schools in New Orleans, Louisiana, and a parenting content creator at The Bossy House. “But they generate so much of it that you need a way to store it or display it — even just for a short time — so that it gets its deference that it is due, but that you also have a way to manage it.”
As a former school principal and a parent, Lause knows firsthand the amount of artwork kiddos bring home. And while she’s all about celebrating achievements and encouraging your little one to express themselves through art (or any sort of project), she’s also realistic about how their masterpieces will fit into your lifestyle: “[It’s about] integrating the art into your house in a way that’s attractive,” she said.
To help you manage the vast inventory of masterpieces your little one brings home, Lause and other parents and caregivers shared tips for storing, displaying and overall managing all your kid’s art.
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Lause teaches online courses helping families create their own command centers, and her quick tip for managing kids' art? Get some clipboards to hang right on the wall, low enough that your little one can reach it and hang their work themselves.
"The foundation of the system is it comes out of the kids' backpack and it goes on a clipboard," Lause said.
After giving the art its proper attention and display time on the clipboard, Lause said, it's easy to move on to the next steps.
"Someday when [your kid] is not looking, you take the pieces you really want and throw 'em in that manila folder and then throw the rest away," she said. "When the manila folder gets full, you put it in some box in the basement that you're saving for their wedding or something. I have another memo folder called 'Grandma.' A lot of stuff gets sent to Grandma."
"I'm not a 'stick it on the fridge' type of person — I need things to look nice, [and] I found these incredible frames that open up like a book — while they're on your wall!" Aiken said. "You can slide new artwork in and out as you please. And my nephew is so proud every time he visits and sees that I took the time to frame his work!"
"Four [frames] across and three down. So it's like 12 picture frames that are just in a grid," Lause said. "It looks attractive and it's just all the kids' art. And you can switch it out."
This set of a dozen frames at Amazon come in 11 by 14 inches.
Bondioli said that someone gifted her family a mosaic print made from pieces of her kids' art, and she loves looking at it in her home.
"My kid's nine and now she has less artwork, but she has more tests that she's proud of, but it's just the same system," Lause said. "She's always put her work that she's proud of on that bulletin board. That's kind of cool as they grow up, to realize that it's not always gonna be finger painting, sometimes it's gonna be algebra."