Did your vacuum cleaner suck up fuse beads and an old marker cap again? Do your kids complain about boredom even though there are loads of art projects they could make? Learn how to organize kids crafts so they’ll find them and know exactly where to put them away!
“That’s why I don’t do crafts with my kids,” one mom told me as we stood watching my son’s soccer game after I shared that earlier in the day daughter’s latest crafty pursuit ended with marker streaks on my kitchen table.
“The mess is just too much,” she lamented.
She’s not wrong.
I find tiny bits of paper, specks of glitter (the horror!), and dried glue around my home regularly.
As a type-A person who prefers a clean home but gets easily overwhelmed by cleaning, I’m not always excited when my 5-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son whip out their boredom-busting craft supplies. A paint or marker-filled disaster is only a few minutes away.
But here are a few reasons why I craft with my kids, messes be damned:
- They can explore their creativity to figure out what artistic medium suits them. Paper crafting? Painting? Sculpting? Hot-gluing everything in sight like their mom does? 😉
- All that cutting, folding, drawing, and fuse-beading builds fine motor skills.
- It keeps them relatively quiet and stops sibling arguments, as long as there’s more than one gluestick on the table.
- It’s not TV. I can only take so many episodes of “Henry Danger” before I lose my mind.
Since we’re a crafty family, we accumulate a ton of craft supplies. But with all that stuff, I wondered how to organize kids craft supplies in a way that makes them convenient to use and easy to put away (that’s the crucial step).
Here’s what I came up with, and I hope these craft storage and organization ideas help you devise a system that works for your family.
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We’re lucky to have a lot of cabinets in our kitchen, so since my kids spend a lot of time in there I dedicated one cabinet for craft supplies.
Although some of their arts and crafts supplies are in our guest room’s craft area, everything the kids use regularly is here.
Choose a convenient spot for your kids’ craft supplies close to where they typically craft.
That will localize the mess, and you don’t need much space.
Over time, other random stuff landed in the cabinet, so I recently decluttered the space.
I’m not gonna lie, this took some time, especially with a little girl leaning over my shoulder to say “But, Mommy! I love that pink marker even though it’s dried out!”
But since I pared down their craft stash – with their help – the craft cabinet’s stayed pretty tidy for the past few weeks.
To say I’m shocked is an understatement.
Easy Ways to Organize Crafts for Kids
Create Dedicated Storage Space for Craft Kits
It’s helpful to have a neighbor who’s a sales rep for a toy distributor! She invited our kids over on a snow day to pick through her brand new craft kit samples, and they had a great time using them.
But, we didn’t have storage space for the craft kits until we cleared out the top shelf of the craft cabinet by
- Moving what didn’t belong (a basket of CDs)
- Tossing broken or used-up craft supplies
- Throwing away the unnecessary packaging for completed crafts
Now that the craft kits are organized and have a dedicated storage spot all for themselves, my kids can easily find and use them on a bad-weather day.
Set Up Simple Storage for Fuse Bead Templates and Projects
But you know what’s not so fine?
When they spill all over the floor.
Try to consolidate all of the loose beads from different kits into a single container. Although it’s more challenging for kids to find the colors they want, it’s a whole lot better than slipping on loose beads.
I haven’t yet found a great way to display completed fuse bead projects, so, for now, a clear plastic shoe box stores small finished bead projects and templates.
Organize Crayons and Markers That Go Anywhere
A portable craft caddy is the best way to organize crayons and markers so kids can bring them wherever they want to create. While the caddy doesn’t completely stop crayons and markers from being left on the floor, it certainly helps a lot.
Weed out all the cap-less, dried out markers, then check to see if your child’s school participates in ColorCycle, Crayola’s program to recycle old markers.
Or just toss them. I won’t judge you.
If you have tons of broken crayons, use them to make your own DIY crayons with my step-by-step tutorial.
Toss or recycle all the coloring and activity books that aren’t used anymore or filled with scribbles although your kid’s moved on to coloring within the lines.
Since coloring books are a popular party favor, you may have new ones that your child will never use. Instead of recycling them, bring them to your daycare, preschool, or pediatrician’s office.
Once you’ve trimmed the collection, organize coloring books in magazine holders – one for each kid so you’ll avoid arguments!
Now that I figured out how to organize my kids’ craft supplies in a way – and location – that makes sense for them, my creative kiddos use the supplies more often and (most of the time) put them back in the right spot.
That’s a win-win, if you ask me.