I'm a professional declutterer. Here are 3 things parents can do with their kids' art.

• I'm a professional declutterer and also a mom.
• I know how chaotic it can be to try and store all of our kids' school art projects.

If your kids are anything like mine, they produce a tsunami of art. From handprints to scribblings, paintings, glitter-bombed popsicle-stick sculptures, pottery, beads, and hilarious drawings, almost every piece feels special.

But the collection can get out of control pretty quickly. If you've got boxes, bins, and drawers full of art and no idea what to do with them, as a professional declutterer, I've got three ideas for you.

Celebrate it

Nothing tells your little Picasso that you appreciate their work like framing it and putting it on the wall. Whether it becomes a permanent part of your collection or is part of a revolving exhibit, showing off that art is way more fun than tucking it away in a drawer, never to be seen again.

Let your kid pick out a frame, and make sure those pieces are signed. This is particularly helpful if you've got multiple children since, eventually, you will forget who drew the lion and who sculpted the lopsided mushroom.

Even if you throw away every other piece of art your kid produces, having a few pieces displayed will let them know how much you value their work.

Pare it down

All decluttering is really just a matter of curation. I advise going through the pile at least once per year. As your child grows (and brings home 100,000 new pieces of art), you'll find that some are just not as precious as others.

My daughter went through a phase of drawing hilariously grumpy-looking fairies. I had at least a dozen at one point, but finally realized that just two told the story adequately.

There's a concept called the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility that states that the more of a thing you consume, the less joy you get from each additional thing. This was developed to describe economic systems, but works in all areas of life.

The Khan Academy describes it this way, "While having three scoops of ice cream makes you happier than two scoops, the second scoop doesn't make you as happy as the first one did, and the third one doesn't make you as happy as the second one did."

Thus owning 10 pictures of aggravated fairies didn't make me five times happier than keeping just two. This is an incredibly helpful concept for parents, who tend to feel that everything touched by the hands of their children is imbued with magic. It is! They are! But that doesn't mean you have to keep them all.

So dive into that drawer every year and see if you can curate the collection in order to get maximum joy out of the things you keep.

Decide who you're keeping these things for

All too often, parents keep their child's art, clothing, schoolwork, or plush toys because they think the kid is going to want them when they're all grown up. This is a fallacy. They might want to keep her favorite teddy bear or a couple of the choicest childhood artifacts, but they're not going to want even a fraction of the stuff you've saved. They've moved on, as they should.

In general, once kids are grown, they're more interested in what they're doing currently than what they did as tots. Look around and take note of how many of your own childhood art pieces adorn your current home. Probably not too many.

Admit it; you're holding onto pieces of their childhood for yourself. That's OK; just resist the temptation to keep every single bit of it. They're going to be doing — and bringing home — many amazing things as the years go on. It's hard to watch your kids grow up, but clinging to artifacts won't bring back those sweet days.

As with all things, there's no "right" number of children's art pieces to hold on to. When you go through that box or drawer, does every single piece bring a smile to your face? Or do you get bored with the exercise halfway through? That might be your answer right there. And if you really worry about letting go of something and later regretting it, the old take-a-picture-of-it strategy is a great one. Remember, the goal is to hold on to memories, not stuff.