Whether you’re an adult or a kid, paper seems to accumulate. This week I’ve been going through [mostly paper] items in my 6-year-olds room. He makes prolific amounts of art (I wrote about it HERE), and it tends to accumulate on every available surface: the floor, the table, the dresser, on his shelves, and in his closet. So we’ve been sorting through big piles of art, deciding what he wants to keep, what he wants to gift to other people, and what he’s ready to recycle. I also picked out a few things that I want to put in his portfolio box as representative of his work for this year.

In order to give him authority over his creations, I let him be the final decision-maker in this process. If he wants to display something, then we find a place to hang it. If he wants to keep something, we find a place for it. The pile of things that he wants to gift to people are currently sitting on my desk, awaiting my help in packaging them for mailing (hopefully they’ll soon be in our Exit Cabinet — see HERE). Those he wants to recycle have been placed in our recycle bin, and will hopefully be on their way to a new life as a paper bag or something similar.

The only rule is that at the end of this process, we he has to be able to easily access all parts of his room. That is, a huge pile of art should not hamper his ability to get to his clothes, bed, electric circuit supplies, or to anything else. Since he can now move freely about his room, I consider our art decluttering process a success.