Oh, kid crafts.
Quite honestly, the bane of my existence as a mom.
I want to preface this with two things:
1) I adore my children and every sweet thing that they create, particularly if it is made for me, and 2) I am in no way judging the moms on the other side of the coin. Heck, I wish I was one of you.
But… I’m not. In fact, I have a significant amount of disdain for doing all things crafty, even for my own self, let alone my children. But that’s a story for another blog.
I don’t know about you, but between school, church, and home, I end up with about 74 million crafts a week being left somewhere in my home or car. Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but not much. It’s insane.
There’s church bulletins, coloring pages, crafts, worksheets, and other miscellaneous items that make their way home with us. Of course, they all have a dire amount of importance to whichever child they belonged to and I am forbidden from throwing them away. And of course, within a few minutes, they take up residence on the floorboards of my car or the pile on my counter.
I love that my children love to create, and I love that they have people and places in their life in which they are able to do so. I love that they have church classrooms to go to and make these sweet things, and that my oldest son is able to go to school and make special things and practice the skills that he’s learned.
But I’ll be honest. With how poorly devoted I am to maintaining all of their creations, I’m convinced that my house is the place where trees go to die.
When my oldest started kindergarten this year, I made a promise to myself that I would start keeping his creations so that he could have memories to look at later. And I have… in a pile in an empty filing cabinet drawer. It’s kind of pathetic, but definitely an improvement.
I wish I was better at keeping things these sort of things and maintaining them. I wish I had organized boxes and totes labeled by year or grade, showing what my kiddos had made and accomplished over the years.
Maybe one day I will get there, but I’m certainly not there yet.
To the moms who do have this figured out, I salute you. How you manage to find the time, patience, and energy to sort through and save the many special things your children make simply amazes me.
And for the rest of us, if there are any moms out there like me, let’s stand in the disorganized chaos together and hope that somehow, a few crafts survive for our kids’ sake. And that we keep our sanity in the process.
So, are you a craft-keeper or no? Let us know!
