How to get all the crafty mess under control

Most of the crafts I share on my blog and this one are pretty simple. They don’t involve supplies that are too weird or expensive or hard-to-find. We’re not trying to do anything complicated. We’re trying to get our kids to explore color or have fun with paint or figure out an awesome paper airplane, and if we’re lucky we get some quiet, calmer time in the house, too (well, unless you’re doing the airplanes. That can get rambunctious. In a good way.)

So I have a core set of crafty supplies we use over and over. They’re in a spot where the kids can get to them, so when I hear the inevitable cry of summer — “Mooooom! I’m booooooored!” I can direct them to the craft cart. It doesn’t always stop the complaining, but it helps.

Some tips on organizing your own craft area:

put things where you use them — for the longest time, I had our art supplies in a cupboard in another room. We didn’t use them as much, and when we did, it took longer to put everything back. Think about where you want kids coloring and painting and stringing beads (in our case: the kitchen table), and put everything there. Make your space work for you, even if it’s unusual. Maybe move pots and pans out of a low cupboard and replace them with craft stuff. I moved a cute little plant stand to make room for our cart in the corner of the kitchen.

use what you have for storage — spice jars work great for beads, or pom-poms, or other small items. Mason jars are good for taller objects like paintbrushes and markers. We’ve also used plastic food storage containers (found at the grocery store, near the plastic baggies), $0.99 plastic pencil boxes, and plastic bins to store things.
keep it simple — you only need a few basic things, and you don’t need to save every scrap of paper or extra cotton ball “just in case someone wants it.” It took me a long time to be able to get rid of supplies we didn’t use, but trust me. You’ll use the stuff you have more when you can find it, and your brain will hurt less.

I posted a list here of the basic supplies we keep on-hand. You don’t really need much more than that. And it’s worth it to get name-brands like Crayola — I can tell you from experience that coloring with generic crayons is awful. It’s a tiny splurge, but a good one.

One more thing — I used the IKEA Raskog cart. I like it because the sides go up, so supplies don’t fall out easily like they might on a cart with flat shelves.

Do you have any tips for calming crafty chaos? I’d love to hear them!

Comments

For more kids’ activities and easy recipes, you can find Laura at Peace but not Quiet, and on facebook and Pinterest.