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Monday, July 17, 2023

Family Craft Supply Storage

As the mother of two elementary-aged children and a crafter myself, one thing we have a lot of in my house is craft supplies! When we moved to our new house, one of my top priorities was the re-organize our craft supplies in a way that made sense for our family and how we use things, taking into account how much older (and therefore more capable and independent) my daughters are now at 11 years old. I still have more to do to get everything the way we want it, but today I'm sharing my progress so far- I'm really happy with our new setup!

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When we first moved in I was hoping to use our hallway closet- presumably intended to be used for linens- as our centralized craft storage closet. But once I started organizing everything I quickly realized there was no way everything would fit! So I shifted strategies to sort our craft supplies into categories: items only the kids would use, items we would all use, and items only I would use. The common items I kept in the hallway closet, the kids' items I put in the girls' shared play area closet, and my remaining items I'm not quite ready to share yet (mostly my planner stickers and washi tape) in my room. 

The kids' craft storage is actually half of the master bedroom closet. Our new house doesn't have a specific "play room" like we had with our old basement, so we designated the master bedroom to be half one daughter's bedroom and half shared play space. One side of the closet is my daughter's clothes closet, and the other side is now the storage for their toys and craft supplies:


The girls have a lot fewer toys now, so a lot of the bins in the bin organizer now hold craft supplies, and some of the spots in the hanging shoe organizer have additional craft supplies as well. The majority of the supplies, though, are stored in the IKEA bins on the rails that we attached to the back wall of the closet. I cut out pieces of clear contact paper and wrote on them with permanent marker to create simple labels for the bins that we can change out whenever we need:


The hallway closet has a lot of the specific categories or projects that we use together, like sewing tools and fabric, paint and glue, tie-dye, beads and jewelry making tools, and scrapbook paper. For categories (like paint and glue) or specific projects (like tie-dye) I grouped them in clear bins with labels on the front so we can all see what's inside and find what we need. 


As a scrapbooker I have a bit of a paper problem and had an absolutely ridiculous stack of paper pads that were getting bulky and difficult to sort through in the drawer I had them in before- I knew I needed a way to store them vertically to make it easier to look through everything, and I knew I wanted to consolidate everything by color and coordinating sets to make it easier to find what I want rather than flipping through every single paper pad, especially since I had a lot of pads that I had used up a lot of the sheets. These clear paper organizers have been a game changer! For the paper pads that have specific coordinating patterns I like to use together, I took out the remaining pages and put them in a bin together where I can more quickly see the paper inside. For the rest of the paper, I took everything out of the pads and reorganized them by color. It is so much easier to find what I need now, and for the girls to use it as well (this video shows a quick tour around both closet spaces, and a closer look at the paper organizers)!


There will definitely have to be a part 2 to share more of my craft storage- I still have more to do to set up my personal craft supplies in my bedroom/ office space as well- but I'm really happy with how things are coming together so far. Our new setup makes so much more sense for our family and how we use things now! 

Do you have any craft supply organization and storage ideas you love? Which supplies do you find most difficult to organize? Leave your suggestions in the comments below!

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