Child's Art Space Organization Tips

If your children love to color, draw, and play in activity books, check out these ideas to organize all those materials to keep your art space clean and accessible 

Both of my older boys have really gotten into art lately. Henry, my oldest, is actually really impressive. He's 4.5 and can color something a perfect even shade, and completely stay in the lines! Otto, who's 3, is a tad more... Abstract. It's cool, he's working on it. Anyway, we've accumulated quite an art supply stash. Activity books with stickers, coloring books of just about every variety, crayons, colored pencils. You get the drift. For a while we were just storing all this stuff in our built-ins around our wet bar. Then *a child* took a crayon to the white woodwork, not to mention we had overflowing, unorganized drawers so we realized we needed a better storage solution to a) nix the coloring on the built-ins and b) to enable everything to fit. I myself have quite a bit of craft supplies I need to store - photo props for blog posts, wrapping paper, seasonal items, craft ribbon and so on. This post is all about the items we used to organize our creative space chaos. Here's how we organized our children's art space, and my craft supplies. *affiliate links used*

Our formal dining room that rarely gets used - so we use it to store art and craft supplies, in addition to eating holiday meals here. Dual purpose living, y'all

The biggest consideration in organizing kiddo stuff is accessibility. You want them to be able to reach it, access it, open it, use it and most importantly clean it and put it away when done! Since my kids are 3 and 4, they can do this on their own, without my help. We did some moving around so that we could put their supplies into the bottom cupboards of a built in bookshelf in our formal dining room. Honestly, we rarely eat at this table, which is large enough to seat 8 adults. I like having their stuff in here because the table is plenty big for them to spread out, and honestly, it means this room gets used for more than just Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter!

We picked the lower half of one of our built-in's for the kids' art storage

The other part of this equation is MY craft supplies. While I want them to freely access their own stuff, I want them to leave mine alone! All of my supplies are blog related so my income depends on these things. I do want them to feel free to create and color, but dang homies - you have GOT to leave mama's stuff alone! There's a big storage closet in our formal dining room (this room is *actually* the family room, but our *real* formal dining room had carpet, so we made that the playroom and transitioned this room to our formal dining. We have an eat-in kitchen so the bulk of our meals are eaten there or outside. We also have a great room. I can't tell you how much I love having four separate rooms that create our shared living space - the room separation means the noise is contained and each space has it's own function. I know I know... Open floor plans are the trend. I'm just not into them. Wow, that was a long tangent.)

Get all this junk organized and stored away neatly!

Ok, back to the organization! We've found some great ways to store the various items we need to store, from coloring books to acrylic paint. Here are some of the key storage items:

This storage bin is great because it has adjustable compartments (good for crayons, different sized sticker sheets, markers, etc) and it opens at the top, so everything won't spill out upon opening. 

This one is great because it has trays that pop up when you open the lid. That works to keep your or your child's supplies organized while stored AND while in use. Crayons can be in one tray, colored pencils another and the coloring books can be at the bottom, all accessible and organized when the box is opened.

This bin is large and flat, which is perfect for stacking. It's great for holding coloring books, activity books, specialty paper, spools of ribbon or anything else that's relatively flat. It carries like a briefcase, which makes it easier for transporting materials.

This is very similar to the one I have, and I LOVE it. It's great when there are multiple tools associated with one craft. In mine I store paintbrushes and sponges on one level and the paint on another. Then both are stored together and transportable in one kit. In another I store seasonal props (faux fall leaves, jingle bells, heart confetti, etc) and seasonal ribbon, all of which I use when photographing the various seasonal crafts and recipes I feature on this blog. 

This one is great for small pieces. If you or your child is into bead work, this one is perfect! Or if you're into sewing or needlework, and want to store similarly colored thread together, this would be a great option.

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Get whatever of the above storage solutions fit your needs and figure out a dedicated space to store them where your kids can access them (or, as in the case of my craft closet - NOT access them!) It's really great when your children can go and get their art supplies on their own, instead of needing you to get them for them. Consider using underutilized or non-traditional spaces like we did. Our formal dining room might not be the obvious choice for an art space, but it's worked out great for us, and uses a room that would only otherwise be used for formal holidays. Finally, storage bins have been KEY! Use something that works for what you need to store, and that can be opened (or not) for the person trying to open it.