Recycle Your Kids’ Artwork

We have all felt it. The bad parent guilt when facing the play room clean up. How could we throw away our emerging artists brave groundbreaking work? Every brush stroke would be analyzed and hailed as the art world’s long-awaited new classic post modern master. Why would we destroy the birth of creativity? It’s as if the voices of a thousand art critics, collectors, and historians reached back from the future crying out at once: Save the art! What would my daughter’s aunt and uncle, who are both art history professors, say?

The truth of the matter is we can’t keep everything.

It was with this realization that my daughter and I had to find something to do with all her daily paintings. Every nook and cranny was overflowing with such masterpieces as “Zombie on the Potty” and “Daddy With a Lightsaber.” As it happens, clean up day was the day before two weekend birthday parties. Sitting down to work on both, it dawned on us that we could wrap the gifts in the colorful saved paper. It was a perfect solution.

Recently, I had been using a new app called Keepy.me, taking pictures of Ella’s mentioned artwork and uploading it to my free account. I can upload 16 photos or videos a month and more if I purchase a monthly or yearly plan. Art sharing made easy on social media. Viewers or “fans” are my privately invited friends and family. I wanted a place online to keep her art without driving my Facebook friends to blocking me. Nana, however loves to see those daily three-eyed self-portraits and uploaded preschool work. Keepy won the 2014 Coolmomtech Pick of the Year award. It sorts everything by date, category, and place. It will be fun to look back in ten years and see her art from age three. The app is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon apps.

Sure there will be shoe boxes here and there full of our kids more memorable or sentimental things. It is okay to keep some, just don’t be plagued by parental guilt about the culling. Come up with creative ways to recycle and reload your kids art. You can share it all with me, I won’t block you.