A Crafty Mess and Stressful Storage
Many kids love to create and make, but how on earth do you store your children’s craft supplies?
Both of my children (aged 7 and 10) love arts and crafts. However, I used to store our supplies in different cupboards, boxes and drawers all over the house, making them inaccessible to the children. Furthermore, crafting in our house had to be an activity that was planned in advance and the kids had to ask for the supplies.
Subsequently, a couple of years ago, I read the Artful Parent by Jean Van Hul. Her family are luckily enough to have an art room. Few people have that luxury, but it got me thinking … art shouldn’t always be led by adults. Children should have the freedom to explore different materials and techniques.
An Invitation to Play
Firstly I purchased the Raskog Ikea trolley and an oilcloth table-cloth. The trolley lives in a corner of the dining room, yes it’s not the most attractive thing to look at and it does get rather messy. BUT, as a result, the kids regularly gravitate towards the trolley and make models and pictures all by themselves.
If you don’t want a trolley, you could use a storage box, dedicate a shelf in a cupboard or plastic rainbow drawer units are useful too.
Get Organised: How to store children’s craft supplies
Once you’ve bought all your craft goodies, there are lots of ways to organise them. I decided to put all the card, paper, foam and stickers together on the top shelf. The middle shelf is full of pots for beads, foam shapes, glitter etc. The bottom shelf has boxes from the Scrapstore (full of scrap materials) and boxes with lots of compartments for embellishments.
My top tips for how to store children’s craft supplies –
- Put art supplies you’re happy for them to play with unsupervised in a tin, basket or trolley.
- Make the art supplies easy to get to and preferably near a table.
- Organise craft materials in clear plastic pots.
- Put papers, foam sheets, stickers together in document holders or cut the top off a cereal box (See photo).
- Keep poster paint, paintbrushes, old t-shirts and water pots in a box out of sight and reach. Only get this out when you’re around! (Above all, nobody wants blue paint on a beige carpet – trust me!)
- Purchase each child an A4 plain notebook with thick pages and encourage the kids to paint, stick and draw in the books. As a result, you won’t have stray artwork everywhere and you can all look back on what they’ve done.
- Save jam jars, pretty packaging and old beauty pots to store your craft supplies.
- If you have space, it’s worth having a box in the garage and keeping a supply of cardboard boxes, kitchen rolls and interesting scrap for model making.
Finally, for ideas on what to put in your craft kit and where to buy it, pop over to my post about What to Put in a Child’s Craft Box
I hope you’re inspired to store your children’s craft supplies and allow them to have their own creative adventures. I’d love to hear what you put in your kits or even better, a photo in the comments would be awesome!
Thanks for reading, warm sparkly hugs,
Lexy
