Every parent has one. A plastic storage box, usually from IKEA, stuffed with paintings and drawings and glued-together crafts. It sits under the bed or in the Keller and accumulates new additions faster than you’d think possible.
We had two. One in the bedroom, one in the basement. The bedroom one was fine. The basement one, less so.
I opened it after about three years. Half the tempera paintings had developed mold spots. The felt-tip drawings had faded so badly some were nearly blank. A few watercolors had stuck together, and pulling them apart destroyed both. The box smelled like damp paper and regret.
Turns out tempera paint and Swiss humidity don’t mix.
What happens to paper over time
Paper is organic material. It breaks down. Here’s what I’ve learned, mostly the hard way:
Felt-tip markers fade. The cheap ones from school are especially bad. Give them two to three years in a box and the colors wash out to pale ghosts of themselves.
Tempera paint is water-based and loves moisture. In a humid basement, it can grow mold within a year. Ours did.
Watercolors stick to whatever touches them when damp. Two paintings face-to-face in a stack will bond permanently.
Crayon and colored pencil hold up best. Wax is stable. If your kid only uses crayons, you’re in luck.
Paper itself yellows and becomes brittle, especially the thin stuff from preschool. Acid in cheap paper accelerates the process.
None of this matters if you’re keeping artwork for a year or two. But if you want to pull these out at their 18th birthday, you need a plan.
The case for digital
Digital copies don’t mold. They don’t fade. They don’t take up space in the Keller.
A good digital archive gives you things physical storage can’t:
- Search. Find every drawing from age 4 in seconds.
- Sharing. Send a painting to grandparents in another country without mailing anything.
- Print on demand. Turn favorites into books, cards, or wall prints whenever you want. (More on that in our guide to making kids’ art books.)
- Background removal. Strip the crumpled paper and kitchen table from the image. Suddenly a crayon drawing looks like it belongs in a frame.
Digital also means you can let go of the physical original without guilt. The art is preserved. The paper was just the medium. That took me a while to accept, but once I did, the boxes in the basement got a lot smaller.
The case for physical
But a folder of files on your phone is not the same as a painting on the wall.
Physical originals have weight. Literal weight. When your kid flips through a box of their old drawings, they’re touching something they made with their hands. There’s a texture to it that a screen can’t match. The smudge where they rested their palm. The crayon pressed so hard it left grooves. The glitter that still falls off years later.
Grandparents don’t want a link. They want something to hold.
Kids love it too. My older son will sit on the floor with a stack of his old work and narrate every single piece. “This was when we went to the zoo. That’s a giraffe. I know it looks like a ladder.” You can’t get that from swiping through a camera roll.
And there’s a real risk with digital: out of sight, out of mind. If photos of artwork live between selfies and screenshots, you will never look at them again. Digital preservation only works if it’s organized. A thousand photos in your camera roll is not an archive. It’s a graveyard.
The real risk: doing nothing
The worst approach is the most common one. You keep everything in a box, tell yourself you’ll sort it eventually, and open it years later to find half of it ruined.
This is what happened to us. Three years of art, roughly 400 pieces, and about a third of them were damaged beyond saving. The ones I cared most about were the tempera paintings from preschool. Those were the ones that molded.
They outgrow it faster than you’d expect. By age 8 or 9, many kids stop drawing regularly. That gives you maybe 5 to 6 years of heavy output. If you don’t preserve it during those years, it’s gone.
The hybrid approach
The answer is not digital or physical. It’s both, with clear rules for what goes where.
We use a version of the 10/30/60 system:
- 10% kept as originals. The truly special ones. Firsts, effort pieces, milestone art. These go in archival storage.
- 30% digitized. Good work worth preserving, not worth storing physically. Photograph, then let go of the paper.
- 60% released. Gift wrap, mail to family, rotate on the fridge, recycle.
For a typical year of 150 to 200 artworks, you’re keeping about 15 to 20 originals. That’s one portfolio box per year. Manageable.
How to store physical originals
If you’re keeping originals for the long term, treat them like the artifacts they are:
- Acid-free portfolio folders. Not a shoebox, not a plastic bin. Acid-free folders prevent yellowing. You can find A3-sized ones at any art supply store. In Zürich, I get mine at Boesner.
- Tissue paper between pages. Prevents sticking, especially for painted surfaces. Cheap and effective.
- Dry location. Not the basement. Not the attic (too hot in summer). A closet shelf in a room with stable temperature and humidity works well.
- Label everything. Name, age, date, and what they said about it. Write it on the back in pencil, not pen. “This is mama on a horse eating pizza” will be the best caption you own in 15 years.
- Flat storage. Don’t roll paintings. Don’t fold. Flat, always flat.
How to store digital copies
The rules are simpler but just as easy to get wrong:
- Not the camera roll. Use a dedicated folder or app. The moment kids’ art mixes with your regular photos, it disappears. Scribbly organizes by child and age automatically, but a manual folder structure works too.
- Tag by child and age. “Lena_age4” is a better folder name than “Kids Art 2025.”
- Backup. Cloud storage, external drive, or both. Digital is only permanent if it exists in more than one place.
- Consistent lighting. Window light, straight-on angle, clean background. Future you will thank present you.
Things people ask
Which is better, scanning or photographing? Photographing is faster and good enough for most artwork. Scanning gives higher resolution but doesn’t work for 3D crafts or large pieces. I photograph 95% and scan the rare piece I want to print large.
How long do digital files actually last? As long as you maintain the storage. A file on a hard drive that sits unpowered for 10 years might be unreadable. Cloud storage with an active account is effectively permanent. The format matters too. JPEG and PNG will be readable for decades. Proprietary formats might not.
What about 3D art? Clay, collages, sculptures? Photograph from multiple angles. These are the hardest to preserve physically (they break, they’re bulky, they collect dust) and the best candidates for digital-only preservation.
Is it worth getting professional scans? For the top 10% you’re keeping forever, maybe. For the other 90%, a phone photo in good light is fine. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of done.
Can I just keep everything in a box? You can. We did. It didn’t go well. At minimum, separate painted pieces with tissue paper and keep the box somewhere dry. But if you’re reading this, you probably already know the box isn’t working.
