How to store kids' art

What is the best way to store kids' art?

Keep a small box of originals, photograph everything else, sort it all by your child's age, and clear out once a year. You keep every memory and only a fraction of the paper.

Most parents start by keeping everything, and end up keeping nothing well. Drawings get creased in a drawer, nobody remembers when they were made, and the pile grows too big to look through. A few small habits work better than one big box.

How much kids' art should you keep?

Keep the originals that tell a story, a handful per child per year, and keep a photo of everything.

There is no right number. A limit of space works better than a count: one flat archive box per child for the whole of primary school, or one folder per school year. When it is full, something goes before something new comes in. The box does the deciding for you.

Worth keeping as an original:

• Firsts. The first face, the first person with arms, the first time they wrote their own name.
• Portraits. Drawings of you, the family or themselves change the most from year to year.
• Their words. Anything with their handwriting, or a story told on the back.
• Gifts. A birthday card, a drawing made for Grandma.
• Their pick. One piece a year they are proud of. Ask them.

Photograph and let go of the rest: worksheets, colouring pages, the tenth rainbow of the week, and crafts that fall apart anyway, like glitter, pasta and cotton wool. A photo keeps those better than a shelf does.

How do you photograph a drawing so it looks good?

Use daylight, hold the phone flat above the drawing, and fill the frame. Skip the flash.

• Light. Shoot near a window in the daytime, out of direct sun. A flash leaves a white glare on wax crayon and shiny paint.
• Flat. Lay the drawing on a table or the floor, and weigh down curled corners.
• Straight above. Hold the phone level with the paper so the edges stay square.
• Plain background. A surface that contrasts with the paper makes the edges easy to see.
• The back. Photograph it too if your child or the teacher wrote a name, a date or a story there.
• Crafts. Take two or three photos from different sides, and one with your child holding it, for scale.
• The same day. Snap it when it comes home, while you still know what it is. "A purple dog in space" is hard to guess two years later.

Crayon Years takes care of the fiddly part. It finds the edges, straightens the drawing and cleans up the background, and it always keeps your original photo. You can add the back and extra angles to the same piece, and record your child telling you what it is.

Should you sort kids' art by date, school year or age?

By age. School year makes a good label, but age is what you will want to compare.

When you look back, the question is nearly always "what did she draw at four?" Age is also how you compare brothers and sisters: Sam at five next to Mila at five. School year is still useful as a second label, because it matches how you remember things: the first class, the teacher, the year of the dinosaurs.

For originals, write your child's name, age and the date lightly in pencil on the back. For photos, keep one album per child and name the albums by age. Crayon Years does this by itself: every drawing lands under your child's age with the school year as a label, and you can mark firsts with a sticker.

How do you store original artwork so it lasts?

Flat, dark, dry, and in acid-free folders or boxes.

• Store drawings flat in an acid-free folder or archive box. Folded and rolled paper cracks along the creases.
• Keep the box somewhere cool and dry inside the house. Attics get hot and basements get damp, and paper likes neither.
• Keep it out of the sun. Felt-tip and marker drawings fade quickly in light.
• Lay a sheet of plain paper between chalk, pastel or charcoal drawings so they don't smudge onto each other.
• Skip tape, glue and laminating. They yellow over time and can't be undone.
• For huge pieces, take a photo, keep a corner you love if you like, and let the rest go.

When should you clear out the pile?

Once a year, at the end of the school year, together with your child.

One clear-out a year is far easier than deciding drawing by drawing. Pick a fixed moment, like the last week before the summer holidays, when the school bag comes home stuffed. Then:

1. Spread the year's pile out on the floor or the table.
2. Snap anything that doesn't have a photo yet.
3. Let your child choose their favourites for the box. Most children decide fast, and they often pick something you wouldn't.
4. Add your own picks: the firsts, and anything you would miss.
5. Recycle the rest quietly, out of sight.

Once every piece has a photo, letting go of the paper feels different. Nothing is gone. It just takes up less room.

How do you turn kids' art into a book?

Once a year, or at the end of primary school, choose 20 to 40 favourites and print them as a photo book.

A book is the best way to make sure the art gets looked at again. Pick pieces from across the whole year rather than ten from one busy month, and put a title and their age under each one. Then read it together. Children love seeing how they used to draw.

Crayon Years Pro makes a print-ready book PDF from your gallery that you can print at any photo book service or print shop. If you would rather have a company scan the originals and print the book for you, some services do exactly that. Our comparison of kids' art apps shows which.

How do you share kids' art with family far away?

Share one gallery, instead of sending photos one at a time.

Photos sent to a family chat disappear under a week of other messages. A shared gallery keeps everything in order, so grandparents can scroll back through the years whenever they like.

In Crayon Years you invite the other parent and the grandparents with a link. Co-parents can add drawings and keep their own copy in their own iCloud. Grandparents can look, send hearts and record a voice reaction. Read how sharing works, or send the grandparents to the page for people who got an invite.

Where do you start?

With this week's drawings, not the backlog. Photograph what came home this week, put the keepers in a box, and do the old pile a little at a time. If you want an app for the photo step, Crayon Years is free for 24 new drawings a year, and keeps every one in your own iCloud. Your privacy questions are answered on the privacy page.