What to do with all their drawings
A four-year-old can make a drawing a day. Here is how to keep the ones that matter, photograph the rest before they go, and end up with something better than a drawer.
1. Keep fewer originals than you think
Keep the firsts: the first person with fingers, the first name written, the first time the family had a dog in it. Keep the ones that made you laugh, and anything with a character who keeps coming back. Let the rest go once it is photographed. A drawer of everything is a drawer nobody opens.
2. Photograph the rest before they go
- Lay it flat, near a window, in daylight. No flash.
- Phone straight above it, the whole sheet in the frame, edges and all.
- Don't fuss over glare, creases or lined paper. They are part of it.
- Write the month on the back first, so the date survives the photo.
3. Store the originals flat
A flat box or an A3 folder, out of the sun, one per child, with the month written on the back of each sheet. Not the loft: heat and damp do more damage than years do.
4. Keep the photos in an order that means something
A camera roll loses them among screenshots within a month, and a photo does not know the day it was drawn or who is in it. At the least, an album per child per year. Better, a record that keeps the date, who is in it, and which characters come back, so that in five years you can find the first dinosaur.
Where Feltip fits
Photograph a drawing and it is kept exactly as drawn, read for who and what is in it, and linked to the characters it shares with earlier ones. Free, with nothing on sale yet, and the originals stay with you. For grandparents, one private link shows every drawing as it arrives, and you can switch it off. Prints and cards come later, once we have held one.