We are keeping more than the paper.

Hi, I am Jon. I started building Little Binder because the floor of our house was covered in creations and it was honestly more than a bit out of hand. So, we took the very reasonable step of taking all of our children's hard work, putting it into boxes, and moving it neatly into a closet. I took one look at our now much cleaner floor and I was not as happy as I thought I would be. In fact, I felt bad. I realized that maybe we would go through those boxes 15 or 20 years from now and have some vague memories of a tiny portion of what they had made and some sense of regret for how little we remember of that time in our children's lives. This felt kind of unfair.

The Remedy: …or not!

We took all of their work back out and took photos of the “important” ones so as not to clutter my phone gallery too much… What? So now my physical excuse became a digital one. There must be a more intentional way to solve this problem.

Well of course there is, let's build a small dedicated space online for just the art that the children make. Ok! Great! Problem solved!?

…I quickly realized that it is not all just art. What happens when it goes beyond a scribble? When they come home from school and say, “Mama, Dada look at this paper mâché jet pack I made. I'm going to space with these paper towel rolls.” How can we share that with Grandma? She will love it! Or what about the things they make that cannot be saved? …the playdough bridges or the sandcastles? My children like to bake. They have recipes that they write in their own words. I want to keep those. (some of them are terrible though.)

It was plain to see how much those boxes would just reduce the memory of their hard work and creativity, and my little digital vault spiraled into Little Binder.