Organizing Children's School Papers + Memorabilia.

A little over a month ago I asked you dears how you organize your children's memorabilia. Your tips were wonderful and inspired me to finally clear up my desk and get some kind of system into place. 

Here's what I did:
-Waded through boxes and piles of colored pages, stories, tracings of hands + feet, and the cutest little stick people drawings you've ever seen. I sorted out our favorites from the collection.
-Once I had our favorites picked out I organized them by child + age/grade level.  
-I purchased file boxes + folders from Office Max and organized each child's memorabilia into their own file box.




I loved Jen's idea of making a cover sheet for each year's folder. I decided to design a label for each year that could be printed off easily and filled in with each child's information. Along with the label, I attached that years school photo to the front of the folder using self adhesive picture corners. When the files are slipped into the clear file boxes it's easy to see who the box belongs to. Plus, each file box is stored in an easily accessible place making it handy to add to the collection when those special treasures come home from school.

The labels I made go from Preschool through 12th grade and were designed to be printed onto Avery 3 1/3x4" Shipping Labels. If you would like to use them to organize your children's school papers and memorabilia you can download + print them here. Happy organizing!

School Paper Organization Labels download.

40 comments:

  1. Such a good idea!

    Oh my goodness, the difference between Easton's 1st grade and 4th grade pictures is amazing. Your sweet boy has grown up so fast. What happened to our little preschool kids? ;)

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  2. What a fantastic idea! My oldest just started Kindergarten, and my second just started preschool, so if I start now I'll never get behind!

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  3. OK, maybe I will finally do this. Your labels are so cute and have inspired me to do something about the box of artwork that I trip over every day!

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  4. Those look great! And it must feel so good to have all of those papers organized. :)

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  5. i can't believe mrs vandervert is still teaching! i had her in 4th grade! so wild. that's been what, 14 years ago!

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  6. I bought boxes a few weeks ago for this very purpose. Seeing your results gives me more motivation to get started. They look fantastic!

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  7. it's only week three of the school year and the side of my fridge is loaded. you weren't kidding about all this paperwork jazz.
    +++
    totally inspired by you this week.
    on my list:
    organize utensil + junk drawer.
    purchase cook book.
    make apron.
    start luc's save box.
    +++
    thanks for being my friend.
    love, lin

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  8. Such a great idea! Thanks for sharing and for the labels.

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  9. Inspired! Can't wait to get dug into my girls' artwork and organise - feels like mountains of work though, and I don't have any at school yet. Gasp.

    Do you get your kiddies to help you select the pieces to keep, or do you just sort and decide?

    H xo

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  10. Oh Danyelle, I just love to sit and soak up your simple brilliance. And look at your Easton! What a handsome boy he is!

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  11. Genius!!! I am not a mom – yet and I am so bookmarking this idea for later!

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  12. That is fabulous. Pretty. neat. and organized. I just need to gather it all up and do it! Thanks for the kick in the pants to get it done.

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  13. Genius idea! The school pictures on the folders are a wonderful added touch!

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  14. Hi! I don't know why I can't see these pictures! I see your others just fine, but not these ones. And I really, really need help with organizing my children's school papers! lol.
    Maybe this is a silly question, but do you see the pictures okay at your end? I see you have several comments, so maybe it's my computer being finicky!
    The labels are too cute, and I will start organizing with those. Thank you!

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  15. Great idea! Thanks for the post.

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  16. awesome ideas! i heard from an organizational expert that she has a bin for each child for ALL of their papers throughout the year. she doesn't worry about picking the best and throwing some until the end of the year. then the child helps pick the best and goes through them each year to thin out the ones they don't love as much as the new ones. :) thanks for your ideas!

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  17. If only I was this organized. What a great idea! Must force self to do this.

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  18. So you have each grade in one folder? Mmm, maybe I'm saving too much;-)

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  19. I just found your blog via Pinterest and LOVE it! So many fabulous ideas. Happy to be following along!
    Jenn :)

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  20. Friends, it looks like the file has been compromised. Perhaps from too much downloading? I'm not a computer whiz so be patient with me as I try to come up with a solution. I'll be sure to post an updated download link on this post when it's available. xo.

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  21. Another idea I tell my parents (I am a teacher), is to take pictures of their child's art work etc, so you will have the memory of it but not the bulky piece itself! This inspires me to get organized!

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  22. thanks for your wonderful post!! a bunch of us are getting together to work on this project together. :-)

    re: your file...if you upload the word document file - that would probably work best. that way we can manipulate it if there are issues w/ alignment, etc.

    thanks for sharing your ideas!

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  23. This is an awesome way to reduce paper clutter. File organization can definitely helps you make your life easy. Thanks for sharing these tips.

    shredding services orange county

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  24. I've got to do this! Thanks for sharing. Idea pinned!

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  25. Just downloaded the labels--I love Google Docs. Thanks to you, I am inspired to organize my children's schoolwork. I'm off to get labels today and got the file boxes yesterday. Thanks so much for sharing your great ideas!

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  26. Thanks for the great idea. Very timely since all of the end of the year school "stuff" came home!

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  27. The labels are fantastic. Heading to Staples today to get the Avery labels. Wondering if you could email your template design to me directly.

    pintane@sbcglobal.net

    Thanks for the inspiration!

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  28. What a brilliant idea!! I've tried to do this for years; now the hard part--weeding thru the reams of papers all my children have accumulated from over the years that I just couldn't bear to part with!! I hope I'm able to take a photo of their art & "recycle" the original :(

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  29. Love this!? Did I miss ideas about oversized projects? Especially in the younger grades, we get a ton of larger-sized projets/artwork...Ideas?

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  30. I just did this for my soon to be 2nd grader and soon to be kindergarten-er!

    Great idea, and I love that they each have their own box instead of sharing one!

    I did have problems printing the labels, but "fixed" it by just cutting the labels ABOVE the cut-off ones a bit above the next number grade...kind of hard to explain, but hopefully it make sense.

    Anyways, thanks for the great tutorial, I've already put ours to use with pictures, journals, award certificates, and report cards

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  31. Very excited to start this for my son. Could you email me the labels at marisf26@excite.com? Thanks!

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  32. Oh my goodness! What a wonderful idea! Thank you so much for sharing!

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  33. Hi! This is such an amazing idea...I bought my labels and am all ready to go but I can't get it to print correctly. I saw in the earlier comments the file has been messed up. Can you by chance email it to me? I would really appreciate it! My email is harrolda@hotmail.com

    Thanks for sharing the idea...I just love the way you designed the labels too!

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  34. Ditto - I can't get it to print either.

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  35. Thank you so much. I just downloaded and printed the labels. I have my hanging file folders and plastic bins. I am ready!

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