Art has always been something that the girls want to do. While art seems to be disappearing from the classrooms as schools find it not important, I think it is important an element of expression for the girls. I want to see what they are picturing in their heads. They enjoy spending time doing different techniques that they have seen or done in other places.
It seems every place that I go with them, art plays a role. For instance, I took them to Moretti’s restaurant. The host provides them with a menu and 3-4 crayons. It keeps them busy for about 10 minutes before they are ready to move on to something else. I try and go to the gym as much as I can. When the girls come along, they are surely doing art for a period of time there as well. We go to the Discovery Center….a ton of art projects are made during our short time there. This past time, I took the girls and a couple of their friends only to find that my hoodie pocket was filled with their “art”.
While I like giving the girls the opportunity to express their art, I am finding that with every outing I have at least 3-4 pieces of art per person. To make matters worse, I converted one of the rooms downstairs into an “art room”. All the kids stuff is now downstairs “contained” to one room. The markers, the crayons, the pom poms, pipe cleaners and everything else known to man. While this was a great idea, I now have tripled the output of my young picassos. What was once done only outside the house is not being done inside the art laboratory. Don’t get me wrong I do love the work that they do but I am finding it to be burdensome of what to do with it.
My knee jerk reaction was to initially save all of it. The girls made it for a reason and it was important. Two words: NOT POSSIBLE! It started becoming ridiculous to try and keep the lid on all the new things that were being produced. Okay it was time for a change so I went to the opposite direction. I started throwing it all out! I can see that look of disgust on your faces of how bad I am for doing this to their art. Well the bottom line is that they are mega producers and even the recycling bin was feeling overworked and underpaid. I explained to the girls that the garbage man was a connoisseur of fine art and he loved keeping all of their stuff.
Okay…Okay….So I felt bad about having only the garbage man being excited about his weekly “haul” of fine art. I came up with a new plan which appears to be working okay for the last couple of days: computer program. While I realize that they are not getting glue and glitter and all the other junk all over….Wait a minute not such a bad thing so far! There is a learning curve with the program but they are doing basic art by using it right now which is nice. I then let them save it to their own folders so they can “enjoy” it as many times as they want. I have also imposed a new rule that they can keep 10 pieces of art which I will plaster on the walls of the art room. If they want to keep a piece of art, they have to remove one of the 10 that exists on the wall. PURE GENIUS!
I have found something that might fix the load of guilt that I feel throwing their art work away. We will see what happens. This all could implode and my house may again become a disaster of artwork at every turn. Only time will tell.
Any thoughts on what the best way to deal with the mountain of art that you have in your house? Let me know below!