Arts and Crafts Supplies Storage

Kendra at Handprints on The Wall has a great little feature called Minimizing Mondays.  Each week she declutters one area of her home and invites others to share what they are doing as well.

Of course, I am all over that!

This week, the subject over at Minimizing Mondays is kids' arts and crafts supplies storage.  I have spent years trying to gain control over these types of items, wanting to have a wide variety, but not wanting it to be out of control.

Here is what finally worked for us.

I purchased this storage cart at Costco for about $30.  We call it our Art Cart.  One drawer has crayons and coloring pencils, a second has markers, the third has stencils and scissors, the fourth is full of stickers, the fifth and sixth have various crafting supplies - glue, glitter, pipe cleaners, buttons, googlie eyes, you name it!  The seventh has those dot painters and some painting supplies, the eighth and ninth drawers contain play-doh tools and the last drawer has stamping supplies the kids can use.

In beauty of the Art Cart is that we can wheel it to the table in the toy room, or the dining room or where ever, and all our supplies are handy.  Also wonderful is that I can just pull out the drawer we need, set it on the table or our island and let the kids have at it.

Where ever possible, I have put like items into smaller containers or bags to keep things organized.

In our kitchen, we have part of our lower cupboards on the edge of the kitchen dedicated to the paper, Play-doh, buckets of foam shapes, container of paints, and such.   There is a roll out container that stores all of our coloring and activity books, which keeps things organized and gives the kids easy access to their things.

I love to see our supplies used up and when we run low, we just add various supplies to our wish lists for Christmas or birthdays and we are never low on supplies for long!