Do your kids come home from school with endless forms, mountains of papers, and stacks of artwork that end up in piles around your kitchen, stashed in random folders, and laying on the floor by their backpacks? Do you have a hard time sorting through school papers wondering what to keep and what to throw away? In this post, learn our simple system for organizing and storing school papers and artwork that will give you a place for schoolwork from kindergarten through high school!

have you been asking yourself these questions (as you stare in dismay at the piles of paper around your house):

what do i do with all my kids school papers?
how do you store children’s school papers and art?
how do you organize schoolwork so that it doesn’t keep piling up as a bigger job to tackle?
how do i organize my papers quickly?

well look no further because i have the easiest solution for you! it takes very little time and it has worked for our family (plus hundreds of others) for the past six years and we plan to keep it up through high school!

First, a confession.

every weekday, my sweet children walk through the door after school. i am thrilled to see their bright LITTLE faces. i look forward to spending some of the afternoon with them. and i wish their backpacks and all the papers inside would go away. forever.

do you feel this way? don’t get me wrong. i love to sit and listen as they explain their artwork and worksheets. but when the explanations are over, what to you do with all that paper?

in the post on tackling paper clutter (yes, it needs updating but the information is still on point!!)i discussed how to organize school papers so they are at least off your counter. but when your temporary system gets full, you need a long-term solution. and that solution still needs to be easy for you to keep it up.

until now, none of my long-term school paper storage solutions have been successful. it’s not hard to see why, with these half effort attempts:

leaving the papers in a pile on my desk to go through later.
sliding them under the couch to stay flat and safe.
stashing them in random, mismatched bins i promised myself i would eventually label.
hiding them in my desk drawer for a future date when i’d have tons of time to sort through them.
putting them on the basement stairs in hopes that someone else would bring them down and organize them for me.

do you see a theme here? later. i always have this hope that at some later date, i will magically have hours and hours to organize all the things that drive me crazy. but here’s a secret i have to keep retelling myself. there is never time. you just have to sit down, amidst the crazy-busy of an otherwise disorganized day, and do it.

after years of scooting our school papers around, i finally put a solution into motion. in a matter of hours, i created an organized place for all of our school papers, all the way up through high school! sound amazing? it is, and you can totally do this.

How to go from cluttered to organized.

friend. this is what our school papers looked like before (in my dark basement storage room that will never photograph well with an iphone!). i don’t even know where to start with this picture. i consider myself to be an organized person but this is what our papers looked like at first after they left our cute kitchen filing system.

if you are thinking to yourself, our papers are too disorganized to even begin to organize them, just refer to this picture above and know that you are not alone. you can totally organize your school papers for good with!

if you’re overwhelmed with where to start, i’ve got you covered. to get our school papers organized, i first asked myself 5 quick questions. you can grab them for free HERE in the Grateful Home Starter Pack. these 5 questions are my favorite ones to consider when i need to streamline or simplify something for my life. on the front end, it might seem like you don’t have time to answer these 5 questions. but they are quick! in the end, they will actually save you time so you have more energy to focus on the things that matter (and less on your annoyance about the paper piles!).

5 steps to organize & store school papers

Step 1: Gather all your school papers

this step is messy but necessary. grab all the papers from all the random places you’ve been storing them. make a big pile or spread them out so you can see them. remember, don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of papers you have. soon you will be able to keep school papers organized with no trouble at all!

Step 2: Sort your papers into categories that work for you

in this step, go through your papers and start sorting them into categories that make sense (no throwing away yet, just sorting – unless you want to). the key here in this step is that your categories need to make sense FOR YOU. some of the solutions i researched were:

making separate piles for different categories in each grade level. for example: 1st grade awards, 1st grade report cards, 1st grade academic papers, 1st grade artwork, etc and the same for the rest of the grades.
sorting by grade level by subject. for example: 1st grade math, 1st grade reading, 1st grade science, etc. and the same for the rest of the grades.
sorting just by grade level. for example: 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, etc.

i know myself and for me, any sorting beyond just grade level was going to take too much time. i love the idea of sorting by subject or by category, but i also know i don’t have time to do that every day after school. which means our school papers would end up right where they started, in piles around the house. you don’t want this!

in the end, i had to decide that i am ok if our school papers are that organized (even if it looks super duper pretty on pinterest). but i completely understand if you are different. that’s why in this step, you should go through your papers and put them in categories that make sense for you and what you are willing to keep up with.

knowing my own personality and what i have time for in a day, i decided to organize all papers into super simple grade level categories.

preschool/pre-k
kindergarten
1st grade
2nd grade
3rd grade
4th grade
5th grade
6th-8th grade
9th-12th grade

i asked my neighbor about the older grades, since weren’t there yet when we started this. she recommended combining grades starting at 6^th grade. she said she does not save as many papers at the older grades. now that we are there (my son is in 6th grade and we have been using this system since he was in preschool), I totally agree!

deciding to just put everything together by grade level has worked really well for us, and also means the kids can help because the categories are so easy. this is the perfect example of choosing categories and a way to sort that works for you.

if a system is cute, and looks good on pinterest, but you won’t use it, it’s not for you. i have time to organize things by grade level and not further categorize them. make sure you are working with your reality.

Step 3: Decide what school papers to keep and what to throw away

if you haven’t already, it’s time to decide what to keep and what to throw away in each of your categories. i know this can tug a bit on a mama’s heart strings. and if not that, it’s just a lot of decision making, which can be hard.

here’s what i think about as i choose what school papers and artwork to keep and what to get rid of.

when my kids move out, they will not want me handing them 27 boxes of school papers and artwork to take to their new apartment/condo/home. neither will their roommate/husband/wife. 🤣
most likely, i will only look at any papers i keep one or two times during my child’s life, if that. when in doubt, it’s ok to throw it away. when you look at what you saved, you won’t remember what you got rid of (and they won’t either).

before you start purging, create some guidelines for yourself. these are mine:

what i keep:

keepsakes. for us, keepsakes are art projects, anything that is a first, report cards, test scores, handprints, cards, and the occasional random paper that makes me laugh or smile extra big.

papers for reference. during the current school year, any papers from the day that i might need to reference or attend to in the near future (classroom rules, policies, field trip permissions, teacher contact info, lunch menu, etc.) go in our lifesaving hanging files. you can read more about those HERE.

what i get rid of:

i get rid of more than i keep. even though we now have a place for school papers, i recycle almost all of what comes home. there are times when this is hard and i second guess myself. but i’ve talked lovingly with each of my kiddos about school papers. they know i am happy to see what they have done but that our house is not big enough to keep everything. recycling something doesn’t change the memory of doing it. this is a life lesson my children need to learn.

Step 4: Choose storage solution for your school papers

if things have a designated place, they won’t pile up as clutter. it really is that simple. your school papers are cluttered because you just haven’t decided where to put them yet (or how). pro tip – where you decide to keep your school papers needs to be near where you unpack your kids’ backpacks! or you need a nice-looking way to sort and keep them like our pretty hanging files here before you take them to their final place. i promise this is the number one way you will keep up with your new easy system for organizing school papers!

the container you choose to buy for your papers will depend on the categories you decided on in Step 2. costco sells these stackable containers (above) in various colors. you can usually find them at back to school time and in january when everyone is trying to get organized.

because i organize by grade level and put everything in the same spot, they are the best way to organize school papers for us. i love them because they are 15” x 15” and can hold some of the larger art projects that come home.

your storage solution does not need to be exactly the same as mine. you just need to choose one that that works for your house and your space. below are some other realistic options i found in my search. pro tip – as soon as you decide on a container, buy it right away so your categories don’t get disturbed and you can finish this job!

{1} a bowl full of lemons

{2} my friend marie’s file boxes for her kiddos

{3} the sunny side up blog

{4} the container store

{5} simply kierste

Step 5: Label your storage solution and file your school papers out of sight

this is the easy part. and who doesn’t love a good label maker? all you have to do is label your storage solution with the categories you came up with in Step 2. you can be as creative with this as you want. i opted for easy label maker labeling.

once you have your system labeled, take the papers you sorted in step two and put them in. easy!

if you want to be able to easily refer to these 5 steps for organizing school papers plus grab a fun printable to label each of your categories as a finishing touch, you can learn more about the School Day Sanity Saver Pack right here (psst – it’s on sale until midnight tonight!!). along with a quick reference printable for these 5 Steps, the School Day Sanity Saver Pack also contains all our favorite resources for smoother mornings and calmer afternoons at your home!