I admire how Heather of pi’lo talks about honoring her son’s collections and all the little things she finds in his pockets. It’s got me contemplating a similar shadow box for my son’s collection of dead wasps and cicada bugs! At the moment I snapped this photo they were in cupcake cups somewhere in this mess in our dining room. This is all my 7-year-old son’s stuff. Both my boys have a drawer for their treasures but obviously it overflowed just a little!

As an aspiring minimalist I’ve been struggling a bit with what to do about all these treasures that seem to multiply daily. Just today we went for a walk in the forest and my 4-year-old son brought back a wasp’s nest, a “lava rock” and some little pebbles. It sure adds up fast!

I saw this post about laundry room collections. Neat idea. Just for fun I thought I’d photograph some of my boys’ treasures before we sorted them.

I decided to repurpose some wooden utensil trays and make them into new “treasure boxes”. We worked together to empty their drawers and they decided what they wanted to keep. I should note that in other situations I have decluttered toys on the sly!

Their “treasure boxes” now rest on the bookshelf in the bedroom they share. Looks so nice and tidy but I’m sure it won’t last long!

In our living room we framed some of their watercolor paintings from kindergarten. I also like this idea for hanging kids art on a curtain rod to feature their everyday drawings (for a short period of time, ha! ha!).

Can anybody else relate? How do you deal with all the stuff that kids collect?

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