As I mentioned in my Bittersweet Moments Ahead post the 2011/12 school year is upon us and all three will be in school. To prepare for the waves of paperwork that will hit my kitchen counter from August to May I’ve fine tuned the organization in hopes to keep the waves of paperwork under control.
A basket for each son!
This year I will get three of everything . . . school lunch calendar, weekly newsletter, Market Day order forms, and the list goes on. The plan is to post one copy on the refrigerator for any monthly calendar that needs to be kept and for all the rest to be read and recycled.
When it comes to the boys school papers I keep anything that was created from their heart and recycle the rest. For example: tests, homework, etc. that is an aid in teaching them gets reviewed, they get an “at a boy” if it’s great score, and off to recycling it goes. Creative writing stories, a timed test that set a record, artwork created from scratch, etc all get put in a basket, hence the picture above. There is a basket for each one, so the things I think I’m going to keep are accumulated in their baskets.
At the end of the school year all the papers that were set aside to keep are organized and stored in a storage container, with the year of completion written on the top of the container. The school years worth of papers is topped with the yearbook for that year and their report card.
The storage containers are kept in their closets on the top shelf for safe keeping. I hope to enjoy rummaging through those containers when we have an empty nest years down the road. Oh the tears that will bring. 
How do you manage the waves of school papers?
We try to avoid the waves of paper pile ups by scanning in important documents and storing them on our computer desktop (as opposed to our physical desktop) Each kids gets their own folder -immunization records, report cards etc.- Then we can recycle all the left over information right to the recycling bin. It clears the clutter quickly and makes exporting information a snap! Now as far as having something to look back on I keep art work and projects in their own rubber maid container, as I do enjoy keeping the hand made stuff! We keep pictures on disc why not information! Amyf.