This post is sponsored by Keepy. All opinions of the Keepy App are my own.
I think I broke her heart the day I told her we had to get rid of some of her papers.As I pulled out armful after armful of random papers stashed in the back of the closet, all I saw was the clutter and mess.
I asked both of my twin daughters to help me sort through the papers to help me figure out what we should keep and what we should toss.
Hate cleaning but love a clean house? Pick up this printable Spring Cleaning Bundle and you'll be able to clean it all without feeling overwhelmed!
It quickly became apparent that my daughter Lisa thought everything was important and began “secretly” stuffing papers away in a binder and then shoving that into her backpack, stashing them away in her bedroom, where she shut the door, pouted and cried.
This left me feeling like a jerk mom who didn’t value my daughter’s feelings, nor her every scribble, letter, number, and handdrawn image. Truthfully, I really am a fairly unsentimental and non-sympathetic individual, so I suppose I did come across as heartless (or ruthless) in the eyes of my 5 year old daughter.
I summoned up some sympathy from deep within and talked to her about the situation. The piles of papers and artwork were cluttering our home and making it a mess. The truly great things were lost in the mix, and it was time to let some things go.
Together we calmly went through all the sheets of paper together, again, to determine was truly valuable and worth keeping and what wasn’t.
As my twin daughters and I went through this decluttering of paperwork, I explained that while I love them, not everything they make is worthy of keeping.
That copied coloring page they got from the gym’s childwatch that they only half colored and completely out of the lines with only one color, is not something I want to keep forever. Sorry, but it’s true.
I pointed out several pieces that I really loved and wanted to keep and hold onto that they had created, things that were interesting, that took them time, that were crafty or super creative, or were the first time they drew our family.
Slowly the lightbulbs turned on and they seemed to understand a difference between something worth keeping and something not, things that took more effort and time were better.
From that day on, as they created new art, drew pictures, or colored in adult coloring books, they liked to ask me for my opinions on it, or how they could improve it.
When my children are done with some new piece of coloring or art or drawing they are particularly proud of, they show it to me, proud that they worked hard on it, or because they found it particularly interesting or creative.
For their favorite creations, they love to sneak over to my desk drawer for the scotch tape and tape it on the wall.
For a good year or so, we displayed our children’s art prominently on our living room wall, for all visitors to see. But over time it drove me crazy!
The pictures were haphazardly placed on the wall, some were on construction paper (of various colors), some were ripped or curling away from the wall. It made the first impression of our home look sloppy crazy. While no one every said so to us, as I’m sure they understood the “proud parents wanting to show off their kids’ accomplishments” thing, it was staring them in the face the whole time they visited our home.
I once took them all down (saved those pieces) only to do it again, and again. My kids love putting things on the wall! They get to use tape and proudly show off their stuff. All totally acceptable for 3-year-olds and 6-year-olds! Not so acceptable for a wannabe neat freak homemaker like myself.
The solution? They now display favorite creation on their own bedroom walls. Upstairs. Where they can appreciate them and show them to their friends when they come over to play, leaving my living room wall clear from clutter (mostly).
However, I do still think about the long-term preservation of these images. I recently downloaded an amazing new app that makes it super easy for me to record, document, keep, and share my kids’ artwork and even more creations and milestones! It’s called The Keepy App.
The Keepy App (Review)
I’ve long been looking for an awesome app that will take pictures of my kids’ artwork and save it for me. This app does that but a ton more.
I once spent time taking photos of my twins art when they were probably three years old. They were creating some adorable little things, and I wanted to remember them, and show them to them someday.
However, it was a bit of work to document them all in decent lighting and such, and in the end, the photos are stuck on our desktop computer files, somewhere among the dozens and dozens of photo album folders we have on our hard drive. It’s not easy to find and access them either as they are probably labeled something unrelated like “Birthday 0054” or “June 2014 – 44”.
The Keepy App allows me to snap a picture on my phone (super convenient to do as soon as a new creation is made), crop it using a skew crop (which is amazing), and save it to the app.
When you upload it, you also have the option of recording a video or audio file to the image. I had my kids talk about their artwork. My three-year-old is adorable in his audio clip. He “drew a heart because I love my family.” Awww!
What I love about the audio and video clip attachments is that it’s capturing a moment in time, not just an image. It’s seeing them, hearing them, remembering how they talked, what they thought about, and what made them excited! All things I never want to forget.
When you upload something to the app, you can also add notes about the image, add a date, and more.
When you first set up the app, you create individual profiles for each of your children. When you add an upload, you assign it to one or more of your children’s profiles. This makes it so easy to track who did what and when, and makes it easy to find again later! No more searching through 55 different photo albums on your computer (or phone) looking for that one thing, your one kid did, that one time.
And the app isn’t just for sharing photos! You can upload videos, too!
If you have a milestone video, like of your child walking for the first time, or tumbling in gymnastics for the first time, or singing in a choir, you can upload to the app to keep forever too!
I really feel like this app has some seriously cool possibilities. It’s like a cool interactive Instagram for each of your children, or digital journal of their life. You could record yearly interviews with your children before a new school year. You could do whatever you wanted!
You Can Use the Keepy App to Record:
- Photos
- Videos
- Artwork
- Schoolwork
- Awards
- Certificates
- Cards
- Craft Projects
- School Projects
- Mementos
- Diary/Journal “entries”
A fun component of the app is inviting your child’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, whoever, to look at your uploads. And get this – not only can they leave regular text comments, but they can also record audio or video comments too!! They can share their congratulations or “good job” or thoughts with your child on what they did.
We do not live close to either set of parents, or any members of our families. This is a fun way to share with them what our kids are up to, creating, and succeeding at in an engaging and personal way.
I know, personally, I don’t share every little thing my kids do on social media. I used to share a lot more on my blog, but due to privacy concerns as my blog grew, I don’t share as often about my children reaching certain milestones. And instead of uploading every cute photo, milestone, or accomplishment on Facebook or Instagram, where some people honestly don’t care, or who you may not want to see that content, this adds a level of separation and protection as it’s never available on the World Wide Web.
Oh, and did I mention is FREE to download and upload 5-7 things a month on? If you want to use it more than that (which I do, especially since I have four kids to upload memories about) it’s SUPER affordable at $9.99/yr or $2.99/month.They also offer things like print versions of your content (maybe to print off once a year for their birthdays), allows you to save everything you upload to a DropBox account so you have double backup and records of everything you upload to the app, in its original full-resolution quality.
The customer service is awesome too as the CEO is personally involved in replying to your concerns (you could even directly pitch improvement ideas to him should you find any!). And, if you are like me, have a lot of photos on your computer that you’d love on the app, right now you can email photos or videos directly to them and they’ll put them into the app for you. You can also add them to your camera roll off your phone, or even upload photos directly from Facebook via their Keepy bot on Messenger.
I am very much a fan of this new app as a way of reducing the paper clutter in my home, but also for recording and preserving memories of my children, and starting our own family history in this way. It’s so much faster and more convenient than scrapbooks, photobooks, slide shows, or boxes and boxes full of stuff.
I’ll keep encouraging my children to be creative and draw and hang up their artwork (in their own rooms) but also take the time to engage them about it and keep those memories forever on the Keepy App!
Download Keepy to your Apple, Android and Kindle fire device today and start reducing your kids paper clutter and keeping and organizing your child’s memories.
Shari Carter says
I have twin daughters also! I lvoe that they like crafts, but, whoa the amount of them! The app sounds pretty cool. When my 3 boys were young, I would take a photo of their artwork and then put in on a scrapbook page. Great ideas!
Chelsea @ Life With My Littles says
This sounds so cool! My oldest is almost 4 and we already have lots of paper clutter!
Heather Schwartz says
Thank you so much for the recommendations! I just download it and am exticed to try it. I have two girls. My oldest loves art!!
Katelyn Fagan says
Yeah! I have been using it and loving it so much! You can even have a Facebook bot share old photos you have uploaded and it’ll ask you if you want to save them to the Keepy app! It’s super cool and easy!
Tamara @ Empowered Single Moms says
Genius idea! Thanks for sharing