School permission slips, schedules, and info, oh my!

I used to keep the kids best school work in a 1" binder each yer and when we got the next years school picture I would take down the previous years and add it to their binder along with all of their certificates of achievement, top dog awards, etc. I quickly learned that 6 years of grade school times 4 kids was way too many binders to hold onto.

I bought some thin accordian file folders at Wal-mart and color coded each child. Each child has a folder for each grade K-5th. They just have their report cards, photos, awards, and a few of their best school works.They all fit in one small tote (12 gallon size) and they can look at those when they are older, and I can store them in the attic until then :)

as far as organizing the daily permission slips, field trip info, party invites, etc. I moved to a less than attractive, but functional system. We have a clip board for each child and one for DH & I that I hung on the craft counter area with 3M hooks. This way the prescriptions for the boys, and the school info for the present time doesn't get lost in piles! You could also do this with a plastic drawer system, or even a file folder system. I just like to have mine away from my desk so no one is messing with my personal space.