Taming the kid paper clutter

If you're anything like me, you have a nemesis in your life:

Paper.

My kids bring home insane amounts of paper from school every day. Worksheets, spelling lists, worksheets, forms, worksheets, coloring sheets, and worksheets. You get the idea.

I also have like 8 million papers for our home life.

And the P Family for Dummies binder. Which will be discussed at a later date.

I felt like everywhere I looked, there were more papers piled up. Papers that could not be filed away because they were being actively used. But they didn't need to be lying on my kitchen counter messing up my periodically every so often neat kitchen.

I really want this.It's from Ballard and soooo pretty. But it's also $100. So that's out. I also want the entire Ballard catalog, but that's a whole other story.

So I got to thinking. I need places to put each kids' papers.

OK, file folders. I've seen pretty file folders in the store. But they are like $10 for 5. No way!

I was in the dollar store buying my four Sunday papers to clip coupons , and I saw a package of pretty scrapbook paper for $1 (obviously, it's the dollar store. Everything's $1. It's utopia.) I got to thinking. I currently have file folders at home. Why don't I decoupage this pretty paper on them?

So I did.

I made five of them. Why five, you ask? (woah, this is creepy. My curser has disappeared. I can still type but I don't know where I am. odd) Because I had six pieces of paper. And I needed one piece to decoupage...

the front of the file holder. I had this file folder holder from when I had my office-in-a-closet-which-became-a-crap-pile. But it was black. So I spray painted it cream and decoupaged a little bit of paper on the front to cover the ugly part.

I love it! It's sitting on the corner of my counter. Each kid has a folder, plus a general folder, plus a slot to slide in the P Family for Dummies binder. It's not the gorgeous Ballard thingy, but it cost me $1 in scrap book paper and has solved such a big annoyance in my house.

If you're not crafty you could do the same thing, minus the decoupaging and spray painting.

But that wouldn't be as fun, now, would it?