One Man's Trash...

Why, you may ask, am I showing you a pile of our recycling? Oh no, sir or madam, this is the contents of ONE DAY'S WORTH of art that DaVinci did at school today... ONE 6 HOUR PERIOD, in which I am assuming she also ate, had circle time and a couple of recesses. Most of these objects, I was informed, are "boats that really float!" Boats that in a former life were tape dispensers, glue stick boxes, coffee lids, toilet paper rolls, etc, etc, etc. I am all for re-use but it feels like these days we are just ending up with all these reused items that then become our burden to dispose of. Both of my kids are virtually dumpster divers for art supplies - today I put a throat lozenge in my mouth and Little D immediately grabbed the wrapper and said "I could make art with this!" On the one hand, there is no need to spend money on art supplies and the trash gets a second use, but then on the other hand it becomes art that is actually a piece of paper with a plastic cough drop wrapper taped to it which just means more time for me to dispose of it properly.

The whole process of dismantling DaVinci's art is very difficult for me. What is the proper length of time to keep said "art?" Often her work is three dimensional, so storage is difficult, and scanning is out of the question. She seems to like the process of creation, and then is very excited to show us her work and talk about it, but never seems to care about it after that. Mostly I recycle all the worksheets and such the day it comes home, but I am always nervous that she is going to say "Where are all my amazing boats?" and I will have to tell her that they looked more like trash than boats. We started a bin above the art supplies that we try to put art work in for a holding period just in case one of the kids ask about a recent work. That seems to fill up in a day or two. We also have a bag in the closet of "keepers" that we would like to scan and preserve... you know... the next (first) time the scanning bug hits us. It is overall way more than our little old house has room for.

I know, this is no major problem, and I don't honestly spend much of my day worrying about it. But hey, please give us a break the next time you visit and it looks like a recycling station at my house.

In unrelated news, I was SUPER sick last night and this morning with a cold and felt perfectly awful. It was amazing to see how well little D rallied when it was supposed to be a "Mama and D day" (a day which does indeed come with a theme song) and instead of needing my attention every 3 minutes, he played quietly by himself all morning. This allowed me to doze on the couch until about 10:30 (unheard of in the past) at which time I woke up feeling quite a bit better. Yay for the kids getting bigger and better all the time!