How to Declutter Your Child's School Papers

As a parent, it’s no secret that children bring home a plethora of school papers throughout the year. From artwork and assignments to worksheets and report cards, these papers can quickly accumulate and create clutter. It’s essential to establish an effective system to declutter and organize your child’s school papers, ensuring you preserve the meaningful ones while maintaining a tidy living space. In this blog post, we will provide you with practical tips and strategies to streamline and declutter your child’s school papers and create a clutter-free environment.

Welcome to my Year Long Thorough Declutter Series. We declutter 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. Each day we do a daily task based on the room we are working on. Today, our task is to start decluttering your clutter in your home office. If you prefer watching videos, check out my youtube channel here. Today, we’ll look at how to declutter your child’s school papers.

The best way to develop a new habit is by slowly and daily application. We will begin a new daily declutter habit starting with the 2nd bathroom. In the Year Long Thorough Declutter Series, we will declutter 30 minutes a day, five days a week on weekdays. Sign up to receive daily encouragement and motivation.

Plus, you’ll learn your specific daily task to work toward completing the goal of a Year Long Thorough Declutter where you will declutter every space and learn how to start to purge your house. Are you ready to finally get organized? If so, will you join us? Leave a comment below to subscribe.

If you are new to the blog, welcome! I blog about cleaning, decluttering, and organizing. You can find my free printables to help you get organized in the drop down menu under the Printables category.

Currently we are working on decluttering the Home Office. The daily task for today, June 13, 2023, is to declutter your child’s school papers. Remember, we are focusing on just the Home Office area, so don’t declutter your whole house. We will cover each room separately.

Streamline and Declutter Your Child’s School Papers: A Guide to Decluttering and Organizing

Sort and Categorize:

Start the decluttering process by sorting and categorizing your child’s school papers. Create designated piles or folders for different types of papers, such as artwork, assignments, and important documents. This step allows you to gain a clear understanding of the volume of papers and makes it easier to make decisions on what to keep and what to discard.

Preserve the Most Meaningful Papers:

While it may be tempting to keep every piece of your child’s school work, it’s crucial to be selective and preserve the most meaningful papers. Consider keeping special artwork, outstanding assignments, and certificates that hold sentimental value or showcase your child’s achievements. This helps reduce paper clutter while still preserving precious memories.

The school papers I tend to preserve and keep are ones where my kid’s handwriting or creative thinking was involved, such as a story they created and wrote themselves or a journal. Avoid keeping any craft that involves food. I once kept a candy cane craft that attracted bugs and made everything sticky.

Establish a Paper Management System:

To maintain an organized approach, establish a paper management system for your child’s school papers. Use folders, binders, or boxes labeled with each academic year or grade level. Within each category, you can further organize papers by subject or date. This system allows you to easily locate specific papers and keeps everything neatly organized. If you have more than one child, keep a separate file or box for each child.

Digitize and Create Digital Keepsakes:

Consider digitizing your child’s school papers to minimize physical clutter and create digital keepsakes. Use a scanner or smartphone app to capture and store artwork, projects, and important documents electronically. This not only saves space but also allows you to create a digital archive of your child’s school memories that can be easily accessed and shared with family and friends. I have linked my post below on how to go digital/paperless.

Involve Your Child:

Make the decluttering process a fun and collaborative activity by involving your child. Allow them to participate in sorting and deciding which papers to keep. Encourage them to select their favorite artwork and assignments, teaching them the importance of decluttering and organization. By involving your child, you empower them to take ownership of their belongings and develop organizational skills.

Decluttering and organizing your child’s school papers is a rewarding endeavor that creates a tidy and stress-free living environment. By sorting and categorizing, preserving meaningful papers, establishing a paper management system, and even digitizing the papers, you can successfully streamline the clutter and create lasting memories. Remember to involve your child throughout the process, fostering their organizational skills and sense of responsibility.

If you are tired of paper altogether, check out my post on Digital Decluttering: A Complete Guide. I’ll walk you through the steps to go paperless and keep your files digitally.

I personally have a bad habit of placing items that need to be donated in the laundry room behind the door. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Wrong. Delaying decisions means we still need to declutter.

Maybe you have a habit of delaying decisions, too. Let’s decide today where your decluttered items need to go. Do they need to be donated? Disposed of? Don’t delay that decision any longer. If they need to be donated, sort and put them in your vehicle. Then, make a note in your calendar to drop them off at your favorite charity.

As you are decluttering your items, I want you to try not to just move them to another room. You may be tempted to do that. However, resist the urge to keep everything. Decluttering means we actually part with these items. Otherwise, assign those items a permanent home where you can best utilize them.

How to Begin to Declutter Your Child’s School Papers

1.Only spend time on your specific daily task.

2.Do not get side-tracked or distracted.

3.Work within a time of day that you have the most energy and stamina. This is one of the most useful declutter motivation tips. Listen to your body and work at decluttering when you feel the most alert and energized.

4.Avoid thinking too long about whether to keep or discard an item. This is one specific way for How to Be Ruthless When Decluttering.

5.Avoid cleaning during your declutter. The goal is to purge the dead weight. Getting rid of the clutter is your priority. Cleaning can be accomplished later. Read on for more declutter motivation tips and my room specific deep clean checklist, though, as you will begin cleaning after your declutter.

How to Start to Declutter Your Child’s School Papers

Supplies Needed:

1. boxes -preferably ones you can donate (Avoid plastic storage bins because you may be tempted to just store the items and not part with them.)

2. sturdy trash bags

3. marker/pen to label boxes

Decluttering Tip: Avoid using storage bins to declutter. Storage bins tend to tell your brain to “store” the items for later. That is just delaying decisions. If you aren’t getting rid of items when you declutter, you are not truly decluttering. This is why I recommend a trash bag, also. A trash bag tells your brain to “trash” the item.

Obviously, recycle if you have that option. The boxes you use should be ones you are willing to part with, so I recommend sturdy cardboard boxes. As to donations, there are many charities that will come pick up your items for you at your home.

I use one in particular where you can book an appointment for pick-up online. This is so convenient, as it saves you the hassle of hauling stuff away yourself. Scheduling that pick-up also motivates you to declutter by a certain date.

Steps for How to Declutter Your Child’s School Papers

1. Start by eliminating trash first- use a sturdy trash bag

2. Sort items by category if needed so you can see what you have

3.Get rid of items that don’t work or that work poorly, expired items, anything you don’t love, anything that you’ll never use again

4. Box up the donations and trash/recycle the rest

5.Select a charity to donate your items and schedule the pick-up if that is an option

How Do You Declutter Your Entire House (and get it deep clean?): Need to deep clean?

First, My How to Deep Clean Your Kitchen list can be found here.

Second, My How to Deep Clean Your Bathroom list can be found here.

Third, My How to Deep Clean Your Kids’ Rooms list can be found here.

Fourth, My How to Deep Clean Your Living Room list can be found here.

Fifth, My How to Deep Clean Your Bedroom list can be found here.

You can get your printable Daily Housekeeping Routine and Deep Cleaning Your House Schedule here. This 15 page printable kit is delivered digitally to your email for you to print and personalize. What Does a Deep Clean Include? It includes a daily schedule, calendar pages, and deep cleaning checklists for every room and area of your home. Check out the link above to see a sample page of what you’ll get in my printable set designed to help you create your personal Homemaking Checklist.

Also, you can get the complete digital printable copy of the Year Long Thorough Declutter Series Calendar and Checklists here. The printable digital download is delivered to your email. It includes 25 pages of printable calendar pages and checklists to help you declutter every room in your home. You can find that here.

New to deemiddleton.com and don’t know where to start? I recommend going in this order:

Step 1: Check out this post on the 1st step you should take to get organized. If you don’t have a calendar, you can grab my free weekly printable calendar page here. It is in my shopify store, but it is totally free, so you won’t be prompted to put in any payment information. It is a free download and will be delivered straight to your email.

Step 2: Create a daily Housekeeping Schedule. You can use this series to start to set up your own schedule. You can also use this simplified weekly schedule.If you often ask: What is the fastest way to clean a dirty house? Or, if you struggle to get organized and have tried and failed time and again, you can likely find out which of these 11 reasons cause you to fail to get organized.

Step 3: How do you remove clutter? How Do You Declutter Your Home?.…Sign up for the Declutter Series and get your entire home decluttered in just 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week.”Declutter Your Home” checklists are provided in each email.

Step 4: What is the fastest way to clean a dirty house? Use a timer and use the Deep Cleaning Checklists above. They will help you get your home sparkling after you’ve decluttered.

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