My name is Mir, and I... have given birth to two pack rats. I'm not particularly organized, myself, but I definitely don't have the hoarding gene they both seem to have. It puzzles me. For me, something like paper clutter arises because I'm busy and I don't have time to go through the piles on my desk, and I don't want to risk throwing out something I need, like a bill or a receipt.

For them, something like paper clutter arises because every single scrap of paper in the world that they've ever touched or written on or breathed near is the most wondrous and unique scrap of paper that there ever was and they don't want to risk throwing out anything, because surely whatever it is, they'll need it later.

Yeah.

As you might imagine, it's a bit of a bone of contention in our house, because the children generate huge amounts of paper. They bring papers and artwork home from school. They invent "projects" here at home. My daughter got some books on origami for the holidays and Lord help me, just as I thought she was outgrowing the whole "every paper is sacred" thing, now there are tiny swans and little intricate cubes and various other masterpieces she simply must keep.

It can take over the house in very short order.

Over time I've settled on a few very simple strategies; they've by no means solved the issue, but it feels like things are more or less manageable, at least.

The rules of paper in our house are as follows:

1) If I find it where it doesn't belong, it's fair game to be thrown away. If this is truly the most wondrous/special/fantabulous thing you ever made, then why is it on the floor of my office? Right. This rule at least (mostly) keeps the kids from leaving these items all over the kitchen counters and other places where they don't belong.

2) Remember the art chest, and use it wisely. The children have a three-drawer plastic chest in which to keep their art supplies. It's of generous size and their various markers and such really only occupy the top drawer. The bottom drawer holds reams of paper. The middle drawer is for everything else, and that includes creations they want to keep. When the chest is overflowing, they know it's time to do a sort and purge or I will do it for them. It's a nice system, because the drawers are large enough that they can continue to stuff them full for quite a while before the inevitable clean-out session, and by the time it arrives, the items which were oh-so-important a few months before are now easier to discard.

3) Each child has four magnets on the refrigerator. My kitchen would probably look a lot snazzier if I didn't allow my children to plaster their artwork all over my fridge, but I don't care. I consider the display of drawings on the refrigerator an inalienable right of childhood. That said, I still need to be able to both find the fridge and open its doors. Each kid may hang up to four masterpieces on the fridge at any given time. If you have four up there and you have a new one to hang, well, it's time to make some choices. Items removed from the fridge which aren't ready for discard may be saved in the art chest or given to me for my collection, if I agree it needs to be kept.

4) Mom keeps the ultimate collection -- the small but definitive assortment. Every year I pick a few select papers and art pieces of the kids' to put in their memory box (which is a box in my closet). They're welcome to state their case on why a given piece should be saved for posterity, but the decision is mine in the end. (And again, if they want it saved and I don't want it for the box, they are welcome to save it, themselves, in the space allotted to them.) At this point, I save maybe a folder's worth of papers each school year, and as I tell the kids, I'm not necessarily saving the best or most perfect, but the pieces I think most represent them and that they'll enjoy having the most when they're older.

We still battle paper clutter, of course. My son regularly complains his shelves are too full, and it turns out that he's jammed them so full of notes and "booklets" and such that his books are falling to the floor. My daughter will heap keepsakes on her dresser until I threaten to dispose of the pile, and then she'll go through it with all of the joy only a tween girl can share when her mother is being totally unreasonable. But our four basic rules serve us pretty well, and keep the day-to-day paper monster fairly well under control.

Check out other stories and suggestions around the blogs:

Gail Gray at Divine Caroline has tips for taming your children's art clutter.

Mama King at 4 Crazy Kings extols the virtue of the accordion file folder.

Alyn at Flying With Kids counts the papers as she goes through them, so that she feels more productive (love that)! She also suggests scanning artwork and making it into a book (and then the originals can be tossed), which I thought was a neat idea.

Tracy at Tips to Organize Life seconds the scanning idea, as well as supporting the "only what fits in this space" concept. She also suggests using old projects to make new ones, like cutting up old pieces to make new collages.

Finally, SouleMama reminds me that this time is short, and soon enough the kids won't bring me their masterpieces. Her words do make it easier to just let go and not worry so much about the clutter.

How do you handle the paper monster at your house? Do you have any foolproof organizing tips when it comes to the sheer volume of paper most children seem to generate?

BlogHer Contributing Editor Mir also blogs about issues parental and otherwise at Woulda Coulda Shoulda, and about the joys of mindful retail therapy at Want Not.