School Paper Storage and Organization

My kids are now out of school!
So every available surface in my house is a mess with papers 
and school books everywhere!!  


So today, I'm sharing how I store and organize school papers.



First of all I start with sorting everything into 3 piles: Trash, Take Photos of, and Keep.


There's lots of trash!  
All of that goes straight to the recycle bin (or the trash can).


Then there are the items I want remembered, but don't want to keep because they are too bulky.
These are the school books, the work books and various papers.  


I take photos of these items and include them in our yearly photo books.  


Then there are the items I want to keep.  
These are the items that have sentimental value like my little man's end of year work book, any awards my children receive, class and team photos, etc.

I saw a pretty good storage idea somewhere in this huge internet land and 
adapted it to fit my needs.  


I bought one of these plastic boxes that hold hanging files, for each of my 3 children.


I labeled the outside with their initials.  
Then I labeled the inside with each school year from 
Kindergarten to 12th grade.  (not shown in the above photo)

Periodically throughout the year, and of course at the end of the school year,
I put all of the "keep" papers directly into the file 
labeled with the school year my kids completed.  



I store the boxes on the top shelf of my kids' closets.  
They are up high and out of the way, but not so hard to get to that I don't keep up with it.

It's a pretty good system that we've used for a few years now.  
Hopefully, if you're in a big, old school paper mess, you can do something like this!
Let me know if it works for you!