Reader Space: Crafty Closet Storage

By now, you may know I am a little obsessed with organizing and beautifying closets.  In fact, I have been plugging away at our Preston's closet this previous week and am extremely anxious to reveal the results to you....

So imagine the cartwheels I would doing when I received the following email....

Jen wrote:

Hi Jen! I have been following your blog for a few months now and I wanted to say that you have really inspired me to get my house organized! 

I also wanted to share my kid's craft closet. with you. I love finding storage solutions that  really "work" and putting all of our daughter's art supplies and small toys into these clear bins has been a lifesaver for us! 

http://letsmakeitours.squarespace.com/lets-make-it-ours/2010/9/25/kids-craft-storage.html

Anyway, thanks for creating such an inspiring bog..keep up the awesome work!

Jen

Be prepared my friends!  Not only will you see some insanely amazing organizing going on here.... you will also be pulled in by her awesome blog and see oh so much more!  Enjoy!

Jen blogged:

One of the things that bothered us the most about our last house was the lack of storage space. The entire main floor had only one single closet, which we used for coats and shoes. All of our daughter's craft supplies were supposed to live in one cupboard in the kitchen. No matter how many times I organized it, everything fell out every time we opened that cupboard...it drove us crazy! When we bought our current house, we were thrilled to see that the main floor had four large closets and a pantry. I immediately decided that this large closet which is just off the entryway and across from the coat closet was going to be our craft closet.  I should mention that the reason this is so important to us, is because Chloe LOVES doing crafts. We don't have cable {or a TV at all on the main floor of our house} so she is usually coloring, painting or doing a puzzle with any spare time she has.

The top shelf holds two seagrass baskets; one is filled with some miscellaneous items of mine (label maker, note pads etc) and the other holds our daughter's art work. Once the basket is full, we sort through it and choose her favorites to put into a binder. The second shelf holds small bins of art supplies and toys. Next is a shelf containing all our games as well as magazine boxes which hold paper and coloring books. The bottom shelf holds cookbooks and photo albums. 

Here is a better look at the clear boxes. You have no idea how much I love these! We found them at Home Depot for $1 each and they stack really nicely. Up until this week, they were filled with all the usual craft supplies, such as markers, stickers and paint. I recently added boxes for all the small toy sets which made me super nervous when their little pieces were all over the house and sometimes within reach of our increasingly mobile little boy. Having the My Little Ponies, Playmobil and Littlest Pet Shop in these boxes {which are too high for our daughter to reach on her own} is working much better. Chloe is happy too, since all the pieces are together now and she doesn't get frustrated looking for missing parts. 

The labels were just printed out on Avery Labels using their super easy DesignPro software. The first time I made labels for these, they were much cuter and more colorful. Since Chloe likes to recognize letters and attempts to identify words by their first letter, the script font I had used was confusing her, so I made this set much simpler for her. 

I also keep four bins of seasonal craft supplies on the top shelf and bring them down a month or two before each holiday. Chloe is super excited to see the boxes since she usually can't remember what we put in them the year before. It is nice for me too, since I haven't had to really buy anything new for the last two years. When we originally bought the supplies, some of the packages contained for example, 1000 pieces of Christmas foam stickers...they last a long time!

So there you go...that is my solution to keeping the kid's craft supplies from taking over the house. Now I just need to get the rest of the closets in this house equally organized :)

Alrighty.  Who just left the computer to go start sorting things out into clear bins?  Or who opened up a program to print out some super simple labels?  Who said, "This is SO inspiring, I am declaring today closet cleanup day!"

Pretty sure I will be doing all three!  SO many thanks to Jen for sharing her inspirational story with us!

P.S.  Have an awesome story to share?  How about some organizing tips and tricks?  Maybe a project completed from an inspiration found?  Please send your story and photos to iheartorganizing@gmail.com and I would heart to feature them right here, on the blog!!