Displaying Children's Artwork

Even though we still haven’t started construction on our new house due to permitting delays, I’ve been having so much fun planning the space as much as possible. My hope is that we stay at this house for the next 10-20 years (eep!), so I’m eager to get it settled and organized. I’m not someone who likes to constantly rearrange and redecorate; I like to tinker until it’s just right and then just maintain the environment while my focus shifts to other things and projects. (Well, having growing children means that the space will inevitably change in order to meet their needs, but that’s different than simply changing things up for the novelty.)

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how to process, store, and display our children’s artwork over the years. I want to find the right balance between preserving our memories and keeping the clutter at bay. There will be five of us (including our bloodhound) living in 1,779 square feet (3 bedrooms and 2 baths) without a garage, basement, or attic. We’ll have large closets in each bedroom, three linen closets spread out among the two bathrooms, a small outdoor storage area, and a coat closet. I think it will be sufficient space if we’re really conscious about purging, organizing, and minimizing new purchases.

When I was helping my best friend figure out how to hang curtains in his house, I realized that a similar set-up (either a tension wire or a thin curtain rod with clips) would provide an incredible amount of flexibility (especially when it comes to different sizes and shapes of work) and ease for displaying children’s art (of course Pinterest already had several images of the same concept!). The clips could be moved from side to side to accommodate different widths, and if we hung a single rod/wire, then it could fit different lengths. The simple clips wouldn’t require much fuss or effort when we wanted to switch things out.

We could also attach a metal strip to the wall and then use magnetic clips to accomplish a similar functionality with something that was more flush with the wall.

We’ll also need to figure out what to do with the work that we rotate off the wall. I imagine we’ll store it in some kind of plastic container for the whole year and then go through once a year to purge or store more permanently (maybe in binders). By the way, I love this idea from designer Jan Eleni for photographing artwork and turning it into a collage (see photo above).

Our entryway will definitely have to have an inbox area to hold papers when they come out of the backpack. I’m excited to get it all figured out!

5 Comments

Kristy

January 10, 2013 at 1:57 am Reply

I bought an accordion type file case for each of my boys from Walmart for pretty cheap. I use it to store special pieces of artwork or projects my oldest guy brings home for school. It is also good for any certificates, report cards, class pictures, or other things you want to save but not necessarily display. I'd like to frame a couple pieces of their own art for their bedrooms but otherwise, art resides on our fridge or mantel for awhile and then goes into the accordion file which we store in the top of their closets.