Artistic Dilemma

My oldest daughter Grace enjoys making crafts or art work like all kids do.  Because she enjoys being creative and drawing, colouring or painting so much, my house is full of arts and crafts.

When Grace was first able to hold a crayon and make a mark I was excited because I figured she would soon be able to draw me a picture or paint a landscape or create anything in her mind.  I knew at first they wouldn’t be gallery worthy but they would be art to me.  I started to save all the pieces of paper with ‘art’ on them.  I was impressed with how some of them did actually look like people, or animals or actual objects.  But now, it seems a little too much.  I have a large plastic container full of ‘art’ as well as piles around the house that I am starting to wonder if I have saved too much, especially now that Grace is almost four and the ‘art’ she produces now are, well lets be honest, a lot better than the scribbles she first started making.  I want to save as much from both Grace and Leah’s childhoods as possible but I don’t want to have to rent a storage shed to do it either.  So I am at odds over what to do.  I know I have to get rid of some items or pictures, I do already toss the ones that I know Grace didn’t spend any time on, the random pieces of paper that have scribbles on them.  But how do you judge your child’s art or crafts?  If I ask Grace to help me sort though her ‘art work’ she would want every piece saved, she already gets upset when I take pieces off the fridge in order to actually open and use the fridge.  I’ve heard of some ideas such as taking a picture of each piece of ‘art’ but then I would have thousands of photos of ‘art work’ and my house would be full of scrapbooks full of pictures of ‘art work’ and I still have to scrapbook the pictures from 2009 that I have been trying to do for weeks now.  Plus I like being able to save the actual craft or piece of ‘art’, to be able to hold it and look at it up close.  I’ve heard of the idea to just save the best ones and keep them in a large portfolio or plastic container, I like that idea but I just can’t decide what the best ones are.  How do decide between one scribble or craft and another when Grace was a year old.  How do you chose between one painting that looks like a person and another that Grace made when she was two?  Do you pick the first piece she made?  Do you pick your favourite? Do you pick the child’s favourite?  I don’t have any piece of art or any crafts from my childhood, something I wish I had.  I’m not sure if my in laws have saved any from my husband either.  I want my children to be able to look back at their own history and smile or laugh or groan with embarrassment (or at least when I show potential dates when they come over).  I just hope sometimes that Grace or Leah for that matter don’t get into big really large works of art or crafts, I just don’t have to storage space.