Scan them. You can make a curated coffee table book, or load them into a digital frame.

I saw a suggestion once (on Oprah? maybe?) to take photos or scan a year's worth of artwork, and then make them into a bound book using one of the popular services. You can label the spine (if you choose hard-cover) with the year, and then make a similar book each year. They won't take up much room on a shelf, and they'll be fun to look at later on :)

I've kept both of my children's artwork (they're adults now). I just use a large porfolio that I've had for years. I think their kids will have a fun time looking at!
atelierlaforet.etsy.com

Keep your absolute favorites, or milestones(first picture that actually looks like a person, ect ;) in a portfolio or storage, then take photos or scan the rest and sneak them out of the house before they take it over!

I have a two year old also and plan to take pictures of all of it and then make a photobook with all of it per year (or whatever works for you). Then they are protected, can be sized to fit many pictures per page to cut back on clutter you have to keep.

I also keep a few here and there originals to put in her photo album.

I've been taking the ones that seem most meaningful to my son and to us and storing them in kids' art portfolios (such as the one made by Alex Toys). Each portfolio has a label with his age (so there's one for age 2, one for age 3, etc.).

I think I'm going to weed through and scan/photograph, though. Great idea.

Most important, though, is to ask your child to tell you about the artwork s/he has created. Then write their description on the back of the paper. You'll be glad you did.

I save somethings in a portfolio folder and once a year, right around their birthday, I roll them all up and put them in a cardboard mailing tube and label the tube with the child's age and dates. Then start all over for the next year. It seems to be easier to store these tubes, plus the work is well protected. I guess this is kind of old school as compared with digital photo books.

I heard an interview with a professional organizer once who had a great idea: take a photo of your child holding each piece of art they make. This way you're not only documenting the art, you're also visually documenting how old they were when they created it.

My mother had us do a piece of artwork every birthday and kept only those, save a few various epically amazing ones. Worked out really well!

I have just run in to this problem as well, as my son has become QUITE prolific recently! Here's what I'm doing:

1) My son comes home from preschool with loads of artwork every day. I go through each one with him and recycle anything that is just a random scribble, or something that clearly doesn't mean anything to him. I label everything I save with the date and my son's description.

2) I scan some of the more "important" pieces and import them into the yearly photo books I make for my son. Everything else goes into 3-ring binders organized by year. At the end of each year I purge the binder, and only keep the most significant pieces (which is usually still QUITE a lot!!)

3) I have a big stack of the artwork that was purged from the yearly binders. I'm planning to cut it up into small squares or octagons, and create a paper "quilt" with the pieces (with my son's help), that we can display on our wall.

Hope that gives you some ideas!

I keep a limited (very limited) number, take photos of a few and trash the rest. I think it's enough to capture this stage of life, without the sense of overwhelming stacks of paper.

The things I keep are the things that either show real creativity or are meaningful. Scribbles on a print out of a garden scene - trash. Random circles drawn while waiting for dinner to be made, thrown away. The first drawing of our family, in a frame on the wall :)

A friend of mine was just given a GIANT box of old art and school papers and she cried. Not from joy or sentiment, but from the burden of having to deal with it. It's now collecting dust in her basement and gives her nausea just thinking about hauling it around and she doesn't have time to go through it.

Any paper storage/filing system should work as long as you are only keeping a reasonable amount. Kids make TONS of "artwork", especially the minute they're in daycare or school. You really need to pick and choose what to keep or it will become an unmanageable amount and turn into clutter that you never look at.

I can pretty well guarantee that when they're all grown up, they're not going to appreciate you handing them boxes and boxes of what's essentially YOUR sentimental clutter. A few special pieces, yes, but I'd keep it to one small portfolio or box and just keep a couple favourites from each 'stage' or year. You can always keep more initially, and then review at each birthday which were the most special (to you and him) and worth keeping.

As for the scanning... I think keeping fewer originals is a much better archival method and more special than keeping digital copies of every last scribble.

I like the idea of bounding them into a book. Binding books is a pretty easy DIY. I learned how in college and its come in pretty handy.

Make a poster out photos taken of selected items from a year. Keep the ones you really (or your child really) like/s.

I made a book for my sons first 3 years worth of art, I will be doing a second one this summer. You can see how I did it here
http://jojoebi.blogspot.com/2008/08/art-portfolio-book.html

I made this album for my daughter, it has all her special 'projects'

http://jotandscribble.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/look-album/

I believe it's useless to keep things if they're hidden away and you never look at them, so I decided to put my kids' art into binders (which I loaded with page-protecting sleeves). Whenever they make a project I want to keep (as previous posts say, the most important step is weeding out only the pieces worth keeping), I just slip it into a sleeve and it's saved. The kids love flipping through their binders and looking at their own art, and they can show them off to Grandma and Grandpa when they visit. I also let the kids decorate their binders with stickers, which was another fun project they enjoyed. The digital photo books are a cool idea, but I think I would wind up with a big stack of papers to scan or photograph over time. I know I wouldn't be good at keeping up with it. This system literally only takes a few seconds since I keep their binders in the same area where they do all their art.

I have done binders like judydanielle. I got some cute, inexpensive ones at Target an slip the art pieces into page protectors. I also got a large bulletin board to hang in my son's room so he can choose pieces to display on his "artboard."

I think mamainpa's idea was the best. Personally I think the whole idea of scanning and photographing the artwork so silly and totally loses the point.To me what makes my child's artwork so special is to hold it, feel it, be able to see the paint drops and smell the paint, etc. Just seeing a photo or a digital scan of his painting.... uch. What's the point? I would, without blinking, rather save five beautiful little paintings than scan/photograph a hundred.

I cut them up into thank you cards, birthday cards etc... Grandparents and aunties love it and I don't have all the clutter.

I just posted a 5 part series on honoring kids artwork. You may find part 2 most helpful:

http://www.modernparentsmessykids.com/2001/01/honoring-kids-artwork-part-2-make-it.html

Ditto pp about keeping only a handful and scanning a few awkward to store pieces.

Like eirvine27 suggested, I mail off sweet but less sentimental pieces to family and friends who appreciate such things.

Everything else (the VAST majority) gets recycled or thrown out.

I agree with angorian. My MIL kept unbelievable amounts of her kids stuff, I'm talking every card they ever recieved and almost all of their artwork. She gave it to them recently and while it's fun to look through it once, it's more of a burden than a blessing. Honestly, a 30 year old does not care about their artwork from kindergarten.

My son just turned two and isn't in school yet, so he doesn't have all that much artwork amassed, but I'm being careful not to save every last scribble. I do save special things, especially holiday themed ones to use as decorations.

Thanks for all the input & ideas. It's helpful to have the perspective of people who have older kids (compared to my toddler, that is) and have been dealing with larger volumes of artwork. :)

I like the digital photo or scanning ideas, but as some people have said, having the real thing in your hand does have special significance.

I also really like the idea of purging around each birthday and deciding what to keep. Perhaps I'll settle on some combo of keeping only a handful of really significant/wonderful pieces each year, scanning those same ones plus a few more, and trashing the rest.

I have almost no artwork from my childhood (unless there is a stash I'm unaware of), and I took art lessons for YEARS. I don't know where it all went. I wish I had some of it to look back on. Not every scrap of paper or goofy crafty project, but a few things from each year would have been nice to have.