One thing Ava’s daycare does in spades are art projects. She brings home something almost daily, waving it proudly at us as we arrive to pick her up, before abandoning it in favor of the juice she knows we always have ready for the ride home.
So what’s a parent to do with all of this fine craftsmanship? Well, if you’re J then you let it pile up in your truck for a while and then toss it all into the recycle bin without a second thought once it threatens to take over the backseat. If you’re me then you obsessively hoard every single scribble, collage, or piece of glued on macaroni that Ava has (supposedly) created and justify this behavior by the fact that I was traumatized by only having one, yes only one, piece of my childhood artwork saved. My mom gave it to me when she was unloading her basement of all my crap (still haven’t brought those roller skates home yet) and injured me further by asking me why I had so many ‘m’s scribbled all over the sky. *Sigh.* Those were birds. Obviously my interpretation wasn’t clear which could explain that my mother foresaw that I would not be an ‘artiste’ and therefore didn’t bother to preserve my early efforts for posterity.
My dilemma now is what to do with all of this? I have plans. I really do – some involve scrapbooking, some involve scanning and importing into a photobook, and some involve ignoring them and continuing to pile them in the basket beside my desk…which is now overflowing. Clearly the third option is the one most likely to happen.
Ava spotted the basket, which wasn’t hard to do since it spilled over onto the floor and into her play area, and she was delighted to find a hat that she’d made a couple of months ago for Thanksgiving week. I suspect that she had a fair bit of assistance with this one since the feathers were pointing (sorta) in the right direction and they weren’t glued directly to her head.
At least this was one item that I could toss into the recycle bin with no regret since she wore it for ages and pretty much trashed it in the process.
One down, lots and lots and lots more to go…
If you figure it out, let me know. I have boxes and bags and baskets of the stuff too, just waiting for some kind of action on my part.
You are soooo right. Just the guilt alone makes me save everything. I was taking pictures and then pitching most items but somewhere along the way I stopped. I had 2 storage containers full that I moved and now another pile going at my Mom’s