As I unashamedly deposit armloads of my five-year-old’s ‘masterpieces’ into the recycling bin, my husband asks “Don’t you want to save that?”. Yes, I would like to save all of her artwork, but we’d have to extend the house or hire off-site storage – there is simply too much!

There’s an app for everything, including one to deal with prolific little artists. Artkive is an incredibly simple way of chronologically storing, cataloguing and sharing your child’s artwork.

It works simply – take a photo of the art with the camera on your phone, tag the photo with some details (such as title and date) and if you like, you can share the artwork with friends and family. You can even go one step further and print it or use it as the starting point for a range of personalised products.

The app allows you to add any number of children and once you have uploaded the photographs, thumbnail pictures allow you to browse the family collection by child or by grade.

I must admit, I have been having a little bit of fun with this app – as well as giving each piece a title, I’ve been adding art gallery style descriptions in the ‘Notes’ section. For example, the collage my daughter did recently (shown at top) includes the note “A work in tissue paper, drinking straws and masking tape.”

There’s no doubt that I’ll still save a few standout pieces from the kids’ art collections but since installing the app, I have been snapping photos and hitting the recycling bin… without guilt!

As well as freeing up space at home, you’ll be thrilled to know that the Artkive app is free! It’s available via iTunes.