what to do with all the craft projects?

[GeminiMama]

Help! I need a way that I can stay sane and still respect ts creativity. I love that my children spend a lot of time coloring, cutting and pasting (No tv, homeschooling). But what do I do with all the projects? I don't feel right throwing it all out while they are/aren't looking. To leave it just drives me crazy (then I will throw out bags of it). The boys are five right now. I figure I have another year of this mass production (experienced moms please comment). Maybe I should throw the better ones in big boxes to go through on a rainy day years from now? (And possibly sort again?)

[ShannonCC]

I throw a lot out. I don't know if it's the same for all little kids, but for my dd, process is FAR more important than product. She doesn't care about keeping every little thing, she just wants to create When she makes something that she really likes then we keep it. The rest I discreetly toss when she's not looking. We still have a lot of stuff hung up around the house on fridges, walls, etc, but it's only a fraction of what she puts out. You can definitely tell kids live here though :

Edited because I hate typos :

[CerridwenLorelei]

Something we started doing

is photographing it. I usually use a cheapy disposable
Recently though my son used the webcam ( pitiful one too)
And Dh just bought an inexpensive digicam
You can make a folder or cd of your school projects ( we homeschool too)

Even my youngest two haven't minded when it is time to just let it go when they see it "saved for posterity" so to speak

[NiteNicole]

We get a lot of "projects" from our various nieces and nephews, and I can remember my mom encouraging us to give them to people or send them in the mail to family memebers who lived far away. I now see that everyone is just trying to cut down on the stuff - so I guess my uncle in Alaska wasn't really just pining away for my macaroni paper plate Christmas tree anymore than my niece really thinks I want her glitter fairy. Actually, I do keep all the glitter faries, coloring book pages, and various other odds and ends. I've framed a few of the better efforts. Everyone gets a kick out of them.

And when my kids are old enough, I think I'll try to use the smaller projects to decorate gifts for relatives - flat projects can work as tags, bigger things can be tied on as decorations. With brown paper and lots of fancy ribbon, the effect can be quite charming. Yes, I totally ripped this idea off from someone else.