Product Endorsement #2 or How Ziplock Big Bags Cleaned Up My House

I haven't done a product endorsement for awhile and since Preschool has started back and the amount of paperwork and art projects coming home is enormous I thought I'd blog about something that works for me.

The problem all started when my oldest first started her Mother's Morning Out Program. She went every week and did at least one art project. Then we had church and Bible Study where projects were also created. We'd get home and look at the projects then they would find their home on the dining room table. Before you knew it the piles of paper on the table were overwhelming and disorganized. So I'd go through it - recycle some of the paper, send some to my great aunts but still there would be things left over that I wasn't quite sure of what to do with. You know the cute things..things that are special to your child or for whatever reason you just couldn't part with. And still my dining room table would be messy with piles of stuff. And then it all got worse when Lily started school too...

I tried a lot of solutions..plastic totes, paper bags, boxes, etc. But nothing worked as well as I'd like it too until I found it..the Holy Grail of cheap organization: Ziplock Big Bags.

The Big Bags (XL size) are perfect for preschool (and Kindergarten) papers and artwork. They are tall enough for the oversized sheets of paper that come home. They are wide enough for the 3-D projects and sturdy enough for the heavy ones. So now, when we come home we immediately sort through the papers putting aside the ones that daddy needs to see (and dating them) and recycling the ones that aren't so important. After daddy praises the work the project goes immediately into the Big Bag. Each child has one hanging on a coat hanger in the hall closet. The bag is dated with the school year and teachers name. The past 2 years all the work has fit into a single bag and after the school year has ended we just zip up the bag and put it in the attic (eventually I'll go through the bag and toss out a bunch more stuff but at least it won't be as sentimental to me as it is now). Now we have no more piles on the table and a little less clutter. And all the school work for a single year is in one place.

Ziplock Big Bags are great for all kinds of things - clothes, blankets, stuffed animals..and they are much cheaper than plastic bins and take up less room!