Organization / How much do you keep?

[LovingJesus]

I have a question about organization and how much you keep year to year.

I will definitely be keeping our beautiful HOD history notebooks! I have done Apologia elementary and MFW in the past and I plan on keeping those science and history notebooks.

I have also kept in binders, with the plan of making notebooks , every math and spelling and R&S English page, dictation, and writing from the past 6 1/2 years of homeschooling! At this point my storage bins are numerous and buldging from 3 kiddos.

I am the opposite of a pack rat and am known in our family for too often donating things too soon. I am learning in this area. Thus, I would like to pare down my large number of homeschool boxes.

What home school items though are truly meaningful to keep? What do you keep? What are you glad you kept? How much should we keep for legal reasons? We have to test annually, so those scores are my primary proof in our state of their academic abilities. Is it worth keeping boxes and boxes of math sheets?

Thank you!

PS. I also have bins of hands on crafts. The favorites have been put out by the kids for display or hung on a wall. What do you do with the weekly crafts they do in HOD?

[Gwenny]

I keep the notebooks and their writings (final copy if it's rewritten, etc), drawings. I toss all English, math, dictation. The projects are all tossed. I have quite a few grown children that I homeschooled as well and the only thing I like about their old work is looking through their writings and seeing how they improved and also drawings. I had kept some other stuff from them that I tossed years ago as I realized their was no need. It's fun to read through their writings, they love it also.

[countrymom]

I keep everything and I would certainly advise to keep a good portfolio if not everything. I just joined HSLDA and although I haven't had time to look over everything yet, I am pretty sure they give that advice. I take things out of notebooks and attach them with one of those rings to save on space. I just keep the mathbooks as is. We use composition books for English, dictation, and writing, so those are easy to keep. I have a bin for the history projects. I only keep the last day of the spelling activities. I too am overrun with stuff, but until they are done I plan to keep it all.

[Nealewill]

I am opposite of a packrat too but I do keep it all. I love looking back and seeing what they did. The only thing I toss is their projects. I don't have a good storage retrieval for that and we take lots and lots of pictures. I wonder though if you organized it differently and were able to use computer paper boxes for stuff if that would help? With my kids, now I basically take everything they do (except the spelling notebook, grammar notebook, and math workbooks) and I put it all in a 2" binder. Once they are done with their year, the binder goes on the shelf in their room. This way they can look at it again if they want. That is the same for projects. Some projects that were done that were paper in nature, those go in the binder. Others may be displayed for a while. My kids have decorated their walls with things they have created. And my goal this year it is put a shelf so that they can show of some of their crafts if they want too. It would be their responsibility to get rid of some of the older stuff to make room for new stuff. Other than that, I do have a hard time getting rid of things. Currently, I only keep 1 paper box per school year and it has comfortably held the stuff not kept in the binder easily. Since I only started HOD 2 years ago, they each have 2 binders from HOD on their shelves. We used another notebooking company one year prior to HOD so they have those binders on their shelves as well. It is fun to look back at things. But you really do have the freedom to toss the things like math workbooks and spelling dictation notebooks and such. I just don't end up tossing it since I can easily store it.

[LynnH]

Before High School I only keep their notebooks and writing assignments. I don't keep all their math pages or rod and staff pages etc. I do keep everything for High School in case I need to give samples to any schools.

[LovingJesus]

Thank you for all of your answers! They helped me think through how I could better do the organization of daily work completed and the storage of things we keep.

I had not thought to look on HSLDA. I did look and it mentioned keeping the best from each week. With HOD I think keeping all of it, rather then the best, would make more sense. They have a list of things they think home schoolers should have on file. Some I have, and some I don't have.

I appreciate the ideas. Some of them definitely simplify the daily work in HOD for storage. Yesterday was my Target errand so I went ahead, after reading this, and bought a few things that I think will help us daily and end my dislike of daily sorting and putting into bulky binders.

Thank you!

[MelInKansas]

Hobby Lobby sells these "portfolio" things that will easily hold 9X12 paper and 11X17 (well you buy it in the size you want it to hold - nice sheet protected and archival quality, etc). I put the projects in there and so now I keep a lot more of them than I used to. I have my daughter doing her CTC watercolor paintings in one of them and they are 11X17.

[MomtoJGJE]

I take pictures of the projects/art stuff that's too big to put in their binders. I think I have 2" binders for each child for each year Preparing and up, and 1" binders for LHFHG-Bigger. I keep random things from LHTH, but not enough to use a binder for. I also keep all the math and handwriting workbooks, and have a binder of all the random things we do, like 12 days of Christmas lapbooks or planets or whatever we may just decide is fun. But the biggest thing I do to cut down on actual space taken up is the pictures. I have a folder on Shutterfly each year for that year's school stuff.