Craft Desk Organization

Okay ya'll (by the way - I no longer suppress my southern ya'll), now that summer is upon us and I found myself with QUITE a few more than normal girls in the house, I've begun to hear the dreaded "mom, what can we doooo?" question.    I have deliberately scheduled absolutely nothing that was absolutely necessary this summer, with the only exception being the morning cooking camp for Banana that is always the highlight of her summer.   However, I still seem to be running around half crazy mostly for the teenager - to drivers ed, to the horse barn for work, to here - to there - to everywhere! (Counting the days until she is a licensed driver).  So since I am hoping that we will be home most of the summer, it's important to have plenty of things to keep little hands occupied. (Because the teen WILL have her license this summer).  Anyway, somehow the girls craft desk in the basement ended up looking like this lately.   I promise there used to be some sort of organizational system, but OBVIOUSLY, it wasn't working for them.  I think the problems were

A) there was too much stuff - mostly old used up supplies needing to be tossed, and

 B) the boxes with lids where items can't be easily seen or reached was not the best idea, and

 C) my kids are just messy and unorganized, no excuses. 

seriously - no excuses

 I plunked the littlest on the floor with five trillion markers and had her go through them one by one by one by one to see if they were worthy of keeping or needing to be tossed.  She actually stuck with this task for much longer than I had anticipated.

We went through every box and bin that was on or above the desk, purged all the junk, and make a quick trip to the dollar store for some better functioning storage solutions and came up with this!!

Ahhhhh - isn't that lovely? It really only took a few hours, and I spent maybe $25.

These green and blue bins match the ones across the room now on the toy storage shelves and since these are open at the top and clearly labeled, I'm hoping that they might possibly put things back where they belong - but I understand what can happen when creative juices start flowing.

I used these tiny jars I had left over from a birthday party to hold the teeny-tiny craft items such as sequins, google eyes, push pins, magnets, etc.  The labels on the taller green bins are quality card stock Christmas gift labels that I simply turned over and wrote on the back and tied them on.  I now stock up on these after Christmas when they go on clearance as I have found they make GREAT labels for things around the house.

Happy busy children + organized craft desk = one happy momma

I had some left over chalkboard labels from my organizing frenzy last fall that I used on these dollar store bins - I love that these actually look like metal but they are plastic.  I like these for holding crayons, paints, markers, etc.

I also picked up these wide mouth glass containers at the dollar store - perfect for the pens and pencils.

Just be careful not to let your kiddos get toooooooo artsy - or they may start wearing feathers in their hair.