Saving Art

My kids love to do art to the point where they are a fine tuned assembly line for art pieces. Some of the art is modern, such as a single line on a piece of paper. Other times, my kids like to draw cars, unicorns, flamingos, or even Pokemon (at least what they think a Pokemon looks like). It’s one of my favorite things to hoard honestly.

I do have an internal debate on what to save and have to draw the line somewhere (pun intended). My wife does not like to save most of their art and resorts to taking a picture before tossing it in the trash if it is not something memorable (or includes a finger or hand print). For me, I am very sentimental about their art and a lot of it is meaningful, but some of their modern art goes into the reuse or recycle pile since they can product a single line on a sheet of paper in a matter of seconds.

My 3 year old son is really into rainbows and he will make rainbow anything. A rainbow racetrack. Check. A rainbow heart. Check. A rainbow shirt. Check. He will literally draw or color a rainbow on anything and we spent the day today coloring the walkway on the side of the house with chalk most of the afternoon after they got home from daycare. It was just him and I and it was fairly relaxing to just draw whatever we felt like (in his case and with his influence on me…it included a lot of rainbows). I save most of these if I can.

My 5 year old is branching out and making all kinds of things, from her school projects (a robins nest, pictures of birds, etc.) to things she makes up herself (a working purse made of construction paper, a chandelier, a camera made from scrap paper, etc.). It’s amazing to see what she comes up with and it’s also great to see how she interprets the class projects. I love what she brings home and will gladly add them to my stash of art.

I began saving a lot of their art a few months ago because I want them to have the actual pieces of art to dig through when they are older. It’s great having pictures, but I really want them to be able to touch and feel their art to see what they were actually doing/making when they were younger (and maybe even relive some of those moments). I’m sure there are a lot of parents that are on both sides of the fence when it comes to saving art, but until my section of the garage storage is at capacity, I’ll try to save (stuff) what I can in there!