Pizza Box Art

Here's a great budget-conscious idea for organizing and reducing what can become an almost horrendous amount of stuff. I mean stuff that ends up everywhere, comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, and is often stuff that you want to keep. Most of it, anyway. For a while at least.

If you have a child anywhere from preschool to junior high age, then you know about school artwork. Ah yes, that wonderful stuff that is a testament to your darling's budding artistic genius and creativity. That's the stuff! While much of it makes its first stop on the refrigerator door (and deservedly so), there's the question of what to do with the current masterpieces when the new ones arrive. And they always, always do, don't they?

One of the challenges with this stuff is that it's often not nice, standard 8-1/2" x 11" sheets of paper on which the masterpieces are created. Oh no. These kids bring home all manner of stuff. Tiny little things and big, gangly things and everything in between.

Try this on for size. Next time you're at the pizza parlour, ask for a large pizza box or two that you can take home with you. A clean one. This part is very important if you don't want your organizational genius to end up requiring the services of an exterminator due to the fact that fifty-seven thousand ants have taken up residence in your child's art collection. Now, most pizza places will give you the boxes (one or two) for free. Yes, free. If you're a customer, that is. So, plan this one for when you're "doing pizza," and you'll be far less likely to be met with puzzled looks (not that you're not going to get them anyway, but you can always explain that MensaGrrl told you to do it and thereby relieve yourself of all responsibility).

Obviously, I'm going to suggest that you use the large pizza boxes to store your child's art in. As an added bonus, they can slip right under the bed in your kids' rooms. And they can stack, if you have a budding Michaelangelo on your hands. Be sure to get each child their own pizza box, though. This is not a thing they'll want to share.

As an extra project for those little artists, have them decorate the boxes. Start with some sort of contact paper or other material to cover up the pizza company's self-promotion. You can even use fabric and glue it onto the box. Next, your child can decorate the box with glued-on goodies, such as ribbons, buttons, or other paraphenalia. If they're willing, here's a great idea: Take one favorite piece of art, have it laminated, and tape it to the top of the box. You can also use computer-generated graphics and labels (like a lable with the child's name and the year) on your--I mean their--pizza art box.